


Koosh Balls in 221B

by YawningOverTheTapestries



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Anxiety, Couch Cuddles, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insecure Sherlock, John can deduce too, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock's Hair, Trichotillomania, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-02-20 18:27:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2438525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YawningOverTheTapestries/pseuds/YawningOverTheTapestries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those fine lines between self-consciousness, anxiety, and the banal fear of being lost in a beehive of unwanted sensory information, all get smeared together far too easily. Sherlock forgets, regularly, that picking at his own scalp is not an alternative to bearing mental scars.</p><p>Meanwhile, John's getting over his so-called inability to observe, and searching the internet for purple hairy rubber novelties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The curious incident of the Hair on the Floor

**Author's Note:**

> I've written precious little about what it's like living with anxiety - I have it - but this plot bunny got very annoying when I initially decided against it.  
> If you don't think you can handle this, please drop this fic and leave now.
> 
> And please give Mr Cumberbatch's sensitive follicles my most heartfelt apologies.

Sherlock's probably going to give himself concussion, slumping into his seat, head flat against the train window and (almost intentionally) spelling profanities in Morse code with his temple against the glass. His spoilt-brat scowl sums up pretty much everything he's hated about this case: the l-o-n-g drag of over four hours on a delayed train to Norfolk to get to it, their getting severely lost trying to find where their client's village was, the unpredictable weather, and the general wherewithal of the case itself. Intellectual suicide: that was what Sherlock had been seriously considering calling this, after five nights of sharing a single bedroom suite (John suggested they alternate between the bed and the sofa each, Sherlock insisted on the sofa during the full duration of their stay) in a bed-and-breakfast with peeling wallpaper and ridiculously low ceilings and excessive amounts of cat paintings. Also, the surrounding area was impossibly quiet and featureless, an uncomplicated mosaic of little terraced houses, the kind of place that probably hadn't ever seen a reported murder in living memory.

They had still been summoned there, though. Surrounded by anoraks and eyes wary at this pair of urban strangers. And there to try coaxing some sense into the chain of events that led to one dog spending a night by the front door completely silent before going missing, a man found shot in the head beside an abandoned well shaft, and bits of fur from another dog seemingly forming a trail ahead of Sherlock. Tiny little traces of it were all over the place; snagged on wire mesh panels, tucked into cracks in the grain of wooden fenceposts.

Yep, dog fur. Sherlock's catnip. Even with the possible murder to unpick, and all the tediousness of being in this part of the world, the dog fur had caught his attention. Not out of fascination - well, no more than usual: Sherlock keeps a carefully organised collection of it in the bathroom at 221B - but as though he'd been wary of it.

Of course he knew it wasn't anything more frightening than ordinary dog hair - the missing dog was a Staffie mix, the fur came from a shepherd dog of some variety. But all of Sherlock's manner around it, whenever he found any, changed a little. Subtle, but enough to plague John's mind. Like Sherlock had started seeing the stuff in a new light. As if he'd seen a ghost in it. And wanted to keep the feel of it on his fingers, and take it into his memory.

 

 

John certainly knows better than to just stop worrying about it. He's had more than enough time by now to _learn_ Sherlock, learn what's normal for him, whatever that is, and what to look for if something curious happens. The irony is, what's _normal_ for John and Sherlock is for _one_ of them to engulf himself in his workload, even if it means they can get out of this banal place as soon as possible (and break his personal best record on out-of-town cases), and the _other_ to let him take the lead, offer assistance as he can, and just generally be in complete admiration of him. As if that would be enough.

John tries his best to not look like he's staring. The clues are there if one knows what they're looking for. That shirt he's wearing is two days old, and those pouches under his eyes are of the John who's been kept awake for nights in a row. Over Sherlock.

 

 

 

Sighing noisily, Sherlock turns back to the window, his breath condensing into a blurry patch on the glass. He's far from comfortable in this cramped space, as John's sat quite sufficiently close enough to _see_.

 

Bless John, all he knows about Redbeard is that he was there, at some point, in Sherlock's childhood. There isn't really much else that's worth him knowing - even a part of Sherlock is telling him to _not_ start pining over him _again_. He certainly managed to do that for long enough to let himself settle into concentrating on the case. _"If you know your way around the pedigree dog showing community, you might know the Rucastles, breeding and exhibiting Rough Collies for nearly thirty years, until they retired out to the country with their latest and last stud dog."_

_"Of course, well, Monty's more of a pet now, than a show animal. It's like he's grown old with us, and we couldn't sell him on like we did with the others, no matter how much silver he'd won, nor how much he'd be worth."_

_"Yes, yes, interesting, but that was what James Hunter was banking on, when the curious incident of the dog in the night time was first envisioned."_

_"I'm sorry, Mr Holmes, but you'll have to spell it out for us. Monty didn't go missing, it was the other - "_

As Sherlock wrapped up their findings, John couldn't help fall into his habit of letting him take the limelight. At least, their audience knew who they both were, and wouldn't think John was there to fill floor space.

 

_If it hadn't been for the Staffie cross, Blaze, Hunter might not have been welcome on the Rucastles' property. The dog was a great guarding animal, even if he had an owner who was really just there to systematically start to sponge off them, and if he couldn't negotiate any money, he'd just want to get in their good books. "Dog lovers, Mr Holmes," one of their miscellaneous neighbours had said to them in the street. "They're so soft-hearted."_

_"That was the thing about Hunter. He'd been down on his luck all his life. Had a bit of a history of wrong-footing the law. Even his relationship with Alice was teetering on the rocks."_

_"Alice?" "Used to be a kennel hand for the Rucastles years ago, and was spending the summer in the country before going back to Philadelphia to study... a cruel twist of fate, possibly, but it was Alice who took the collie to the vet surgery and discovered he was beginning to develop a serious brain tumour. Vet predicted he had eighteen months at the very best. She didn't have a clue how to break the news to his poor old owners, but I doubt she could have predicted that Hunter would convince her that he'd keep a secret like that for her."_

_"That's... not very clever."_

 

The idiosyncrasies of people. They made John scoff, but Sherlock needed to know them, to solve mysteries like this.

 _"Somehow, he begged, or maybe_ bribed _\- " here Sherlock produced up a quickly handwritten letter that read almost like blackmail, "her to take the collie back to the surgery, either for treatment or to be put to sleep - my money's on the latter as I'm assuming absolutely nothing about the pet insurance fine print - while Hunter brought in another animal, almost completely identical to their dog. At night, so hopefully nobody would see anything, and he'd have his alibi right to hand."_

_"His alibi?"_

_Blaze the Staffie cross bounced across the floorboards, tail spinning, drooling happily over the bespoke rug, obviously excited to hear the bit where he came in. Mr and Mrs Rucastle seemed utterly fine with having a big boisterous dog around, but John wordlessly rose his hands up to shield his face._

_"That," Sherlock announced, "was the curious thing about the dog. If he hadn't recognized the intruder that night, he'd have barked the house down."_

_There were a lot of gasps of surprise and wide acknowledging eyes in that room afterwards, but John's were not amongst them. He'd found himself recalling how puzzled Sherlock had been, with how these two dogs found themselves tangled up in this elaborate game._

_"And it would have worked, if Alice hadn't gone back on what she agreed, and then taken matters into her own hands."_

 

_It turned out, after a lot of failed attempts to call Hunter and call the whole thing off, Alice followed him when he'd smuggled himself onto the Rucastles' property to switch their dog for a younger - well, brain-tumour-free - model. She was there to do some dognapping too, and Blaze wasn't rattled by seeing her either, so willingly followed her._

_Alice knew the Rucastles well, as if they were a spinster aunt and uncle. She really regretted not coming clean about Monty from the start, and if Hunter was going to do this ridiculous thing - which would never work: that collie was a dear member of their family, and a prize-winner in the show ring, no way would they mistake him for any other dog - then he deserved to lose his beloved dog too, as far as she was concerned._

 

_All this came out in the wash pretty quickly. Both dogs seemed fairly unscathed by the whole affair, Alice was deeply ashamed of herself, and Mr and Mrs Rucastle were aghast. They honestly thought their Monty was happy here, gambolling all over the village, making new friends everywhere... god only knows whether or not all the collie fur in everyone's gardens really belonged to him, or to the successor he never knew he was about to be usurped by._

_But of course, that was where the interestingness of the case ended. Hunter's death was in fact suicide. Staged, not very cleverly, as a murder almost out of defiance._

_John got a bit annoyed at this, remembering how Sherlock had them both stake out in the memorial park just outside the village, combing through every leaf and blade of grass into the early hours of the morning - and the abandoned well shaft was far enough off the beaten track for someone to chase him there unseen, but also provided a perfect place to hide his gun, tied to a long piece of cord weighed down with a brick. It would disappear into the well, and its absence would cross suicide off the list straightaway._

 

 _"How do you_ do _that? Work all that out in a couple of short hours? That is fantastic! You're fantastic!"_

_Everyone in the room had to agree with John, if not as vocally obvious as he was in expressing himself. After all, Mr and Mrs Rucastle did contact Sherlock themselves to investigate this._

_But once John and Sherlock had finally peeled away back to their suite in the B &B, Sherlock was in no mood to accept anything more than a coffee from John. Instead he firmly excused himself into the bathroom for a well-deserved hot shower, leaving John to wonder, one more time, why Sherlock was so... so _tight _with his own health and wellbeing, before picking up the Belstaff coat, shed onto the faded carpet as Sherlock came in, to shake it free of dog fur._

 

 

 

"Are you sure your head's okay? You were bashing it every five minutes on the ceiling in our room - "

"My head's _fine_." Sherlock's taken his head off the window, if just to take the edge off John's worry frown. If he asks to see it to be sure, he'll find out.

John _can't_ find out. The long-suffering doctor has had to survive enough of Sherlock's hi-jinks over their time together, so something like this just might be what would tip him over the edge. It's unbelievably ridiculous, a petty little flaw of his. The very worst that will result from it is an irreversible spoil of his physical appearance, which wouldn't be _life-threatening_ , but it would hurt him: Sherlock wears his dark good looks like a suit of armour, and it gives him a bit of comfort, as in amongst all the horrible things people say, they'd still have to all agree, Sherlock Holmes is impossible to miss. The phalanx of morons at NSY, clients of any description, any of London's fellow residents, they all notice Sherlock, whether they love him or hate him. And obviously John knows which side of the argument he stands, but there are always more pressing things to think about.

Sherlock's secretly pleased with how he regards his little affliction. Or, perhaps more accurately, how he regards how he masks it. Like a suit of armour. Which means that whatever's underneath all those layers of coldness and Irish tweed is nobody else's business. And the few people who would ask about it, were around when he was at the age he started it, or people he could give the slip to easily enough.

 

 

 

"Is that what stitched it all up in the end for you?" John offers a kind little distraction from the nagging voice in Sherlock's head, with the small talk they'd share after wrapping up a case. "The fur from the collie? I mean, I'm not a vet, but I do know that people start losing their hair if they get an illness like that."

"Well, I don't know what the Rucastles would expect, if they started seeing it around the village. Maybe it was a fortuitous accident, that there'd be evidence the collie was there, and they'd need never know he had fallen seriously ill. The weather's starting to change as well, which would probably explain why he was shedding." Sherlock's voice sounds dry, and he's not giving John his full attention.

John shrugs. "Anyway, they know the truth now. And it happens, even to the best of us. When someone gets ill we don't have control over it, but we can... Sherlock?"

The detective has practically turned into white alabaster. He's starting flat at the floor, his hands fisted tightly, his eyes unseeing, his jaw clenched.

"Sherlock? Are you okay?"

 

 

Grinding his teeth, and trying to ignore what feels like an itch he really doesn't want to scratch, Sherlock curtly excuses himself and paces down the carriage like a caged animal, and shuts himself in the toilet cubicle at the far end.

The tiny cramped room is a rather offensive shade of sterile white and it smells mortifying. Practically having to fold down his legs, Sherlock winds the canopy of his coat round his body, and closes down the seat to sit on it, elbows on knees, hands clasped tight enough to blanch his knuckles.

With John safely locked outside, the selfish, snappy, noisy demon inside his head can rail all it wants at him, at how John has to _shut up, just shut up about the dognapping case, right now,_ he _has_ to, or Sherlock might combust spontaneously next to him. Maybe that'll be a good thing to happen; maybe that'll set fire to Sherlock so _all_ of his hair will be gone, and he'll never have to worry about _it_ again. Begrudgingly the carriage might need to be fumigated; burning hair smells like hellbeasts ruining dinner. But hypothetically Sherlock would be nothing more than ashes by the time the stink would have dissipated.

John might get in trouble with Great Western Railways, but - no, _shut it! It's not funny._ Sherlock just wants to _go home_. They're _on their way home_ , but they've been going home for nearly a _week_ now, surely? Sherlock didn't even want to take this in the first place, and only took it in the hope there would be a nice murder to get his teeth into.

 

Sherlock closes his eyes, retreating into his Mind Palace for something to calm him down. He knows exactly where to go, but he refuses to go near it. Not here. Not in this excrement-perfumed cryogenic freezer. Redbeard is reserved only for times when he's really lost somewhere dark and with nothing to hold on to. And certainly _not_ when he's just finished spending four days around people, and dogs, and the owners of a dog _that was going to die_ , but slowly. There _had_ to be a better reason for the fur haunting him all over the sodding village - if the poor creature wasn't seriously sick _yet_ , why was this like this?

Sherlock can remember when he and John had been sat in a hotel in Grimpen going over this subject, how much he values how he can put his senses to good use. After nearly having a row.

Oh, but of course, _that_ case had involved a dog that had been almost literally blown up completely out of proportion. And thanks to his ingenuity Sherlock had reduced the infamous Baskerville Hound to flesh, blood, and hallucinogenic gas. _And_ if they could survive that, then this is just _stupid? Isn't it?!_

Eyes back open, he suddenly releases his hands from each other, just before he'd carve the skin of his fingers open. His left hand reaches down for a coat hem - much easier to repair a ripped coat than a ripped scalp... his right hand sneaks into his mess of sable curls, and, clenching everything to distract himself from the pain - short, sharp, tormenting pinpricks - his fingers start pulling hard, and strands begin to come loose.

 

Like the last time, and the time before that... he's careful to keep the tugging to the sides of his head. Because each and every curl on his head is approximately the same length, pulling hair from here is the best option; the patches that form can be hidden out of sight easily with some systematic brushing, and if, God forbid, his hair starts thinning when he gets older, hopefully the hair along here will stand a better chance of staying the same density over time.

But none of this is on Sherlock's consciousness now. He papered a room in the Palace with these rules a long time ago. Now, he's not seeing or listening to anything. He can barely even feel the shake of the train. Everything is smothered, for a few brief precious seconds, in the sweet stinging in his scalp, the remission of _letting go,_ of... whatever it was that was eating him inside. He _doesn't_ want to remember it. He wants to look back on this train journey and just see a confusion of unruly darkness.

Curling individual strands begin to coalesce on the floor. Someone taps gently on the locked door, and John's voice is asking him if he feels travel sick.


	2. Moth-Eaten

"For God's sake, John, I said I'm fine."

"No, Sherlock, get up, look at me, and tell me you're fine. Properly."

For several seconds Sherlock wants to stay locked in the cubicle forever. Even as he opens the door out to the world again, which he knows he'll regret doing. Normally in such a situation Sherlock would big himself up just for the sake of annoying John and everyone else involved, and making the whole general situation so unbearably tense it might break off. Here is different: he hasn't given himself enough time to gather his thoughts and put the mask of self-control back on. He's rushed it, maybe because, as well as John being a single layer of plastic door away from him, they're both not just in public, but in a tightly enclosed public place, which has begun to slow down into its approach into London.

 

"Christ, Sherlock, your hands are _freezing_."

Sherlock's hands are cold because he'd been dousing them under the cold tap, to get rid of the feel of the hair he's just ripped off his own head. And John can say all he likes about how they're blocking the exit for everyone else on the carriage, not to mention the growing crowd of people asking if his friend was okay - they really had no need to tell him that Sherlock had been locked in there for over five minutes.

 

"If you're feeling bad, then we really shouldn't be just stood here."

"I do _not_ feel ill, John. Well, I might soon with all these people in this inhumane level of confinement breathing down our necks."

His voice sounds like granite, and Sherlock does look a bit green around the gills - from the smell of the toilet he'd just been coaxed out of, probably - but he really doesn't look like someone who's about to chuck his guts up. This is nothing more than a magnified version of his prickly get-all-this-hogwash-out-of-my-face look. Even so, he does need fresh air. They both do, and that certainly makes sense. Sherlock's normally good on the road; the claustrophobia of the Tube especially has something of a disconnecting effect on the senses. It's not so much the bounce of an uneven road, as it is the scores of people in a confined space for an excessive length of time - Sherlock is only just holding it together on the train, and that may have been because of the crowds, but then, it may not have been.

 

 

"Come on, let's get out of here."

They're off, on a march down the platform and out of Paddington Station and heading for the taxi rank, as if they've just witnessed some sort of appalling incident. John's still watching Sherlock - in some ways, he's the only person who's allowed to watch him - staying alert for all the details. All the elusive clues, the fine cracks in the veneer of control. John knows what he's looking at, and secretly he's glad he's the only one in a close enough proximity to get to see - not that John's even entertaining the chance of anyone, passing by, to know what they'd be looking _for_ \- Sherlock looks rattled, as if he's walking on pressure pads. His piercing eyes are clouded over, and his jaw, his shoulders, are all tense. It's like he's about to take off in a sprint, to just get as far away as possible from the swarm of irritating things on that train. Sherlock seems more at ease, once they're out in the open, and relieved to be in a taxi and back in a familiar part of the world. 221B, once they finally get to it, offers a soothing bolthole of homely clutter and florid wallpaper - and before John even has a chance to breathe, Sherlock has collapsed onto the sofa like a house of cards.

 

He's holding his head in his hands now, looking shattered, starting to scrub his hands through his hair, but he hears John, who's just hung up his jacket and has stopped, in the middle of the room, and giving Sherlock a quizzical look - he didn't mean to pull such a hostile face, and forces his face to relax. John might smell a rat if he wasn't used to Sherlock's grouchiness; heaped into a pile of his own limbs, Sherlock sighs and pulls a scowl again, before stuffing his face into the leather cushions. His head stuffed into a nest of his arms, he's concealed his secret from John, for the moment at least, and his fingers bury into his hair, scratching against his scalp, and finding a scatter of sparse patches like fingerprints of thinning hair, as if it's wearing thin of its own accord. Coiled in on himself like a nautilus, he's decided at last to have a proper sulk, but when he uncurls himself, there's a fresh cup of tea beside the sofa, and John is sat in his armchair, turned towards him and arms folded on the armrest.

"Don't get bored again too quickly."

 

Shocked out of his own convoluted world, Sherlock looks alarmed. "What?"

"I'm kidding, don't worry - I'm happy to be home as well."

Sherlock looks down his nose at John and rolls onto his back; secretly he's swimming in relief - John hasn't expected a thing.

"Have a drink if you're getting a headache." John's reaching for his laptop, to start drafting the write-up of the latest case. Despite the contented quiet of the flat Sherlock still can't settle properly. Evidently John's beyond being worried about whatever vandalism that might befall the walls in the event of Sherlock eventually losing his ability to withstand how tedious life gets between cases - if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Worrying about it won't solve anything, and John's energy is almost certainly better off being invested in restoring the calm after the storm. Which sometimes doesn't even happen as John can see it happening - one night while they were in Norfolk, one of the nights Sherlock demanded privacy to ‘think without being interrupted’, John attempted to grab a few hours of much-needed sleep, before giving in and taking a seat by the door, slightly cracked open. Where he had just enough view of the room outside it, and making himself promise to go back to bed if Sherlock looked like he'd be fine. Which he didn't. Sherlock was simply lying on his back on the sofa staring at the ceiling, with that stubborn frown on his face that normally appears when he's trying to concentrate. And failing.

 

John knows better than to try and distract Sherlock when he's in a mood like that. Besides, every so often Sherlock seems to remember, he's perfectly welcome to ask John for anything if he really needs to resurface from the confusing depths in his head before he thinks he's ready to.

Bless John, he knows how to make tea just how Sherlock likes it. And having a mug in front of his face isn't a bad way of disguising the fact that Sherlock's resuming one of his many long gazes at John; minding his own business, foraging around for the remote control before flicking round the channels for something to provide some suitable background noise, then finishing off the draft of his latest blog entry, a few minutes later he's discovered a couple of stray bits of dog fur still lodged in his jumper, those long downy strands of collie undercoat that seem to get absolutely everywhere, even after his spending their final night in the B&B as well as half the train journey home picking it all out.

 

Something warm and fuzzy rises up in Sherlock’s chest, as those feelings often do during those quiet hours of respite after a case – they both know Sherlock doesn’t breathe a word during some of these times; often because a good case demanded Sherlock absorb and process loads of information, and once it’s over he’s hit the ground running. Sometimes, though, he just needs time to let his mind resume going at a steadier pace. Why, John simply doesn’t ask. By now he’s learned that just minding his own business is in fact the best thing he can do at this time. By doing that he’s offering Sherlock subconscious help to settle back into a proper routine.

Now Sherlock’s scooped his violin up from its stand and started morosely playing something: it’s sober, elegant, almost melancholy; Strauss, John hazards a guess. But he keeps the thought in his head – last time he didn’t, and Sherlock made a rather scorned comment about how most people think the Blue Danube Waltz was the only piece of work to the composer’s name, and was genuinely surprised when John found that funny. Sherlock can’t deny John’s full of surprises, and it’s embarrassing when he’s a bit slow on the uptake, when it really ought to be a joke but it’s not. They really have grafted together almost completely, to the extent that they can make each other laugh and barely realise it.

 

Obviously already preoccupied, Sherlock broods over the melodies, and a little later, when he can hear John in the kitchen doing dinner he finds himself sticking his hands in his hair again. There’s a tiny chance John will ask – Sherlock tries to remember yet again that John _doesn’t_ know – but the gaps in his hair feel horribly evident, discovered nearly instantly. Of course Sherlock knows where to stick his hand, out of habit rather than any other way. Still, with disdain he charts the different stages of regrowth that he finds, if just to ensure one good thing can come out of it. The most recent episodes feel alarmingly smooth and bare compared to the others; Sherlock feels moth-eaten, made all the worse by the fact he’s done this to himself. He has no good reason to feel like his head – his most precious possession, containing huge great collections of painstakingly arranged data – is unravelling from the inside out. And upon hearing John approaching, he quickly stops drilling his fingers into one particular place, and deftly ruffles up his mess of curls to disguise what he’s done.

Sherlock spends more time poking about his bowl of pasta feeling guilty than actually eating, but it’s good that he hasn’t left it to go cold like he used to. Even though there’s no danger of Sherlock forgetting John’s in the room with him, John’s let him know he’s happy of this.

 

 _Why are you still so restless? You’ve been home for hours now!_ Sherlock stubbornly keeps up his poker face and maintains eye contact with John for just long enough to assure him that he’s genuinely fine. He’s so focused on watching his performance that when John drops a kiss on his temple after he’s got up to put the empty bowls back in the kitchen, Sherlock’s buzzing head shudders to a halt, far too suddenly for Sherlock to see it coming, and he stares back up at John with an excellent imitation of a rabbit caught in headlights in the dark.

“What… what was that?”

 

John’s a little floored by that. He’s kissed Sherlock before, always in a rush, in moments when they’re both already concentrating on something else. Neither of them brought them up again, because they’re really not important, and normally the opportune moments to talk about them are so long afterwards it would simply be awkward. This is the first kiss John’s taken a bit more time over, and the worry he’d had about whether Sherlock would get uncomfortable about them, is probably going to be fulfilled right now.

Sherlock’s blinking as if he’s got dust in his eyes. John clears his throat and levels his gaze with the floor for a second.

“Nothing, it’s just – sorry. I – “

“Don’t say sorry.”

 

It’s just like all the other moments it’s happened: John’s given Sherlock kisses because he’s wanted to.

“Do you, erm, want me to stop?”

Sherlock’s head drops, as if he’s replicating someone praying. “No, John. I don’t want to upset you… I just wish I could explain myself.”

Sherlock’s leant his head against John and it’s being held there by a hand on his shoulder.

 

“Is there anything you want to talk to me about?”

Sherlock’s not going to say he doesn’t want to be touched; look what he’s doing now. There have been opportunities for him to say this, not many of them, but enough for that ship to have sailed a long time ago. Moreover, it’s remarkable how Sherlock firmly requests a wide boundary of personal space from other people, but not from John, and it’s times like this when John’s grateful for that. He can’t help but notice, how Sherlock in fact likes the split seconds, and occasional longer ones, when they’re sharing a moment of contact, even though he’d never admit that he’s noticed.

“No. I can’t quite find the adequate words for it.”

That seems fine. Sherlock’s found his voice; it won’t be too long yet before he’ll be back to talking the hind legs off a donkey while he thinks John’s still around to listen. And he’s not worried about this tentative new direction their relationship is beginning to head in. It’s scaring the hell out of John, but he dearly wants to let it develop, after such a long time of tensely keeping each other at arm’s length, who knows, it might be great…

 

Sherlock’s trying to relax, and John smoothing his hand over his shoulder and down his arm over and over really helps, but he freezes as that hand edges up closer to his head.

“Are you sure? D'you want me to stop?” John asks gently.

“No!” Sherlock suddenly looks crestfallen. “Just… not my hair. Please. Don’t.”

 

“Okay. That's okay.”

It feels kind of upsetting, to deny John from touching his hair. Sherlock’s intensely, possessively proud of it, and if he could trust anyone it would have to be John. And why wouldn’t he want to? John would absolutely love to card his hands through that luscious silky mess, toying with curls until they’re spiked into a satisfyingly crazy glory, and Sherlock’s considering, despite the fact he’d have to get used to lowering his guard and allow John’s hands to lay their claim on him, he’d probably like it. Nothing would spoil it worse than John discovering patches in his scalp that have been stripped, and he’d undeniably know then. And God knows what would happen next. John might never want to lay a finger on him again…

Right now, though, it’s oddly scary and comforting in perfectly equal measure when John sits beside him on the sofa, and simply asks “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?”

 

“I’m tired, John… “

Sherlock doesn’t know what else to say. There’s an elite group of people in Sherlock’s circle of relatives and associates who know his dirty secret, and not one of them learned it on Sherlock’s terms. The memory of each event makes Sherlock’s skin crawl, and he’s spent so long trying to forget, he truly is lost on how he could break the news to John.

 

 

This sour feeling gets even starker and colder, later, in the bathroom, as Sherlock scowls at his own reflection and twists the top half of his body into a bewildering array of angles, as he tries and tries to get a good view of the bald spots he knows are there. Like an idiot, he’s seemingly carefree, when he knows he’s ensconced in here and not being watched; he wonders if he can do a long stricken clear-eyed stare at himself, like a devil-possessed girl in a sick horror movie. Normally he despises the clichéd predictability of film genres, and half the time he makes a point of loudly explaining them all to the rest of the film’s watchers who are actually trying to watch.

The Sherlock staring back at him, too-dark hair against too-white skin, all pale and unsound, all hard cyaneous eyes and cheekbones seemingly drawn even sharper by the harsh light, isn’t a quite Halloween-worthy figure, but is all the more menacing because it looks real. It _is_ real. It follows his actions as he peels up the hem of his shirt and rubs his flattened palm over his ribs; a couple of years back he was halfway across the world skulking in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Mexico City watching a solitary figure, a gun-for-hire of his old sworn enemy. He got pelted with pieces of junk by a cross civilian, and those sore ribs then met a hard fist from his target, not to kill him for his own sake but because he’d been paid to. Maybe he should have known Sherlock would give up his life to beat him, for he’d been out there to keep those he cared about safe.

Faded like flowers under the Sonoran desert sun, those pink gashes nestle into his chest, and still remind him of what he’d had to keep those he loves out of danger, and also of how relieved he’d been to come back to London after two long years – it hadn’t been wise of him to think he could come back to exactly what he’d left, and the fights he’d had with John had proved it. And then John had forgiven him, given enough time to let Sherlock’s return sink in. All a wild, ravaged sprawl of emotion, a violent reaction of shock and grief and betrayal and heart-deep regret.

 

Sherlock closes his eyes to let the memory trickle through, and valiantly holding himself still, breathing too deeply, lifting eyes up to the ceiling, staring at it until his eyes water, but a bathroom is far from a good place to meditate. The dripping of the tap, the dull-edged glass pane of the mirror, little imperfections like these, they all slowly erode at his composure.

A nerve spontaneously snaps, and Sherlock’s fist hits the edge of the basin, as he clenches his teeth but refuses to register the dull pain in his hand. Anger completely misplaced, yet inside his head it makes flawless sense, as Sherlock doesn’t deserve to _not_ be angry, because _how could he do that? How could he turn his back on John for so long? How could he forsake his trust for two full years? He put himself in a_ lot _of unnecessarily dangerous situations in that time. Since when did he care about what made the front page? What good did his staged suicide actually do?_

_Was it all really worth it?_

 

His eyes sting horribly, and tremors start racking against his terse shoulders, but Sherlock is _not_ going to cry. What will crying achieve? Just uselessly drain what’s left of his energy, and result in him feeling pathetically sorry for himself for the rest of the night; that’d be selfish. On top of how selfish he’d been to turn his back the way he did. And John doesn’t deserve this in the slightest.

 

_Oh, John…_

It’s immoral, how John Watson easily is the best thing that could possibly ever happen to Sherlock. He’s proved what he feels, giving up everything else, throwing himself at criminals and psychopaths. They’re doing so much _good_ , ridding the world of abhorrent people endangering other people’s lives. But it’s John that has made Sherlock think he’d have reason to make his life more than just one long, blindly exhilarating, dangerous adrenaline surge; whether he’d liked it or not Sherlock had been smitten with John for years, regardless of whether those feelings would ever be returned.

 

There’s a tiny little thread of rationality buried in Sherlock’s head, telling him to do as John is doing; leave the past where it belongs, and pave the future ahead of it.

 _Where is it?_ Those long, feisty, fastidious fingers are in his unruly mop again, scratching into his scalp. He fans one curl after another into clumps of individual strands, here matted together, here filmy with static… he tugs. It’s like pulling a bung in his skull, to let free all the demons lurking inside.

It feels like it's working; a tiny match is being struck against his head, and again, and again. The pain is so intense, so concentrated. It demands his undivided attention. He tugs again – perhaps he could capture it as it’s released from his scalp, and study it under microscope. There’s got to be something powerful in there. And when something new is discovered, if it can’t be replicated on an industrial scale and sold to the public at large, it ends up being kept under lock and key by the Powers That Be – Sherlock can’t help but crease up, laughing at how Mycroft might react to the idea of it. In spite of the fact that Sherlock’s already deep laugh is crackling, growing rougher, as if his ability to laugh is rusting up.

He tugs harder, cutting his chuckle off and freeing a thin tangle of strands from his burning scalp.

 

Sherlock reels, rocking his head back, his chest heaving, his mouth still open but nothing leaving it. He breathes a little easier, laying the separate strands on the white porcelain, glowering bluntly at them, standing out blackly like hairline cracks.

None of these look like being threads of rationality. Whatever they are. They’re just… strands of his own hair… Sherlock tries smoothing them out straight, but they stubbornly refuse to stop coiling, and he gives up on that, and instead he winds them round his fingers like discarded ribbon. They carve thin grooves into his skin, and slide off as if they don’t have a care in the world. Which they _don’t_. They’re no longer attached to his head. Yet they’re even more intractable as they were before they’d been yanked out.

Sherlock sweeps them into the basin and turns on the cold tap, watching them disappear with glee and disgust at himself, at his passive-aggressive self-harm.

 

Less than a minute later Sherlock’s lying stolidly in bed, his long limbs at stiff angles, his face half stuffed into the pillow, and wrapped up in covers too tight to allow himself to move. His left hand is curled in a loose fist beside his head, in his eye line so he can see the fine blue blood vessels just under the pale skin of his wrist. He contemplates how a well-sharpened razor could fit in those slight creases, and before he’s actually realised it he’s floated back to how often John might encounter patients in the form of young people lost so deep in despair they can’t see any other way out – sometimes one wouldn’t do that to end everything, but a beseeching cry for help. He is a doctor, and an army surgeon before then. He has to be suitably shockproof.

_Oh, don’t preoccupy yourself with such rubbish. There are more important things to care about, Sherlock. There are people out there with genuine problems, unlike you. You’re a drama queen, and a coward as well._

Sherlock rubs fingertips gently into the hollow of his wrist, feeling for his pulse, and then up into his palm. Then lets it flop back down; if he’d folded his hand under the bulk of his body, by now it would’ve gone numb enough for him to pretend it’s _someone_ else holding his hand.

Disheartened as well as riled, he flattens his body into the mattress like a sulking seal.

 

 

_You are a coward, Sherlock. Would you really start cutting yourself? Really? Nope, you’d rather hurt yourself more cheaply, in a way that wouldn’t really last, just long enough to enjoy the lessening effect it has. And after everything that’s been drilled into your head about never touching narcotics again - what lasts longer is the side-effect. And you loathe that, don’t you, you self-obsessed, aristocratically vain pillock?_

_You know you quit the drugs in your twenties, but you’ll never forget how it feels to crave the remission. And that’s no excuse to not actually act like the full-grown adult that you in fact are. Everyone’s got regrets. Yours aren’t special._

_What reason do you have to keep doing this ridiculous ritual?_

Stuffing his head even deeper into the pillow, Sherlock forces a stifle of his breathing, which seems to shut up that despising little voice. And cut off the blood supply to both his arms; they end up numb and prickly, and stand absolutely no chance of reaching back up to his scalp.


	3. Suede Fingerprints

“Sleep well, Sherlock?”

 

Sherlock’s in no mood to answer John, sat in his chair, hands steepled, thinking… with a little closer inspection, John can see Sherlock’s eyes look a bit pink – whatever happened last night, it wouldn’t be something to encourage John that Sherlock slept very much. The detective isn’t so much an insomniac, but an unpredictable sleeper; he’d stay in this bizarre kind of limbo for hours and hours, until he forces himself to curl up under the covers and keep his eyes open until he really has to admit defeat. It’s bloody hard work (of course when there’s a case on Sherlock will stay up for ages working on it) but the tedium of being bored, usually a gruelling thing to survive during the course of a day, makes it easier. The distortion of the world that comes with the dark, which makes Sherlock stare into his reflection in a mirror thinking of scalp dysphoria, also lets him genuinely realise the fact that he’s still human, and humans do exhaust themselves.

 

“Okay… oh, you’ve had breakfast? That’s great – you know, you didn’t need to before… “

John’s voice tails off as Sherlock tilts his head up to look at him properly; he genuinely looks like he doesn’t like the thought of Sherlock on his own, without quite knowing why. He’s got dressed as well but he still looks a bit weary, his still-damp hair all spiked like hedgehog spines, as if he’d been running his hands through it. He’s picked up the empty plate, while leaving the half-finished coffee on the table, before heading back into the kitchen.

Sherlock can hear him filling the kettle and turning it back on. He tells himself to behave.

 

“I did manage to get a few hours of sleep, if just in the hope that it might make you content for one night.”

John gives him an odd look. “What do you mean by that?”

“Don’t take offence to this, but you have reminded me of the benefits of a good night’s sleep plenty of times.”

“Well, thanks for the backhand compliment. And, er, I don’t want this to sound, kind of cheap, but I had hoped making me happy wouldn’t be the only thing that’d motivate you to look after yourself.”

“I am well aware of how you’re seemingly convinced, and therefore mention regularly, that I don’t seem to care about anything at all beyond the work, and what that requires.”

John blinks. “I – what? I don’t. You say that! All the time.”

Sherlock gets up to give John a sizing up. “I imply it. You actually say it. Out loud. Do you want me to record you when you do it? Last time I believe was – “

 

As John takes one step forward, Sherlock backs away – but this is hardly a proper argument. It’s far too good natured for that. And John is a hopeless liar. “Okay, I admit it. But I say it in anger – if you weren’t so determined to make sulking an Olympic sport you might realize it when I don’t mean something I say. And you might notice, I’m trying not to sound like some sort of nagging housewife half the time. You’re getting better at getting a decent amount of sleep. Arranging it into a proper routine. It’ll get easier as you keep working at it.”

Sherlock somehow brings up the nerve to shrug it off. “I didn’t intend to insult you by saying that – “

“You really didn’t. “

“ – but I already know what happens when one doesn’t have their days and nights set up properly. And I know you worry. You seem to do it practically out of habit. I don’t want to try convincing you to stop, because I know how difficult that would be for you.”

“Oh, Sherlock, I… I don’t _like_ worrying about you. In fact I actually feel guilty about it – I don’t wake up in the morning and start thinking about all the ways I can annoy you with all the banal little things normal people all have to do. But I can’t help it, really, when I see you moping about.”

 

Sherlock exhales, and wants to turn his eyes away, but it’s in close proximity situations like this, when the chance of John seeing what might be wrong with his hair is at its highest.

John takes hold of Sherlock’s wrist: to show what he’s trying to say without much success, it’s a pretty simple gesture, but it works. At least, right now it does; there have been times, when it’s perhaps been not quite appropriate, or simply mistimed, when Sherlock has stared down at the joining of their hands as if it’s something that’s been offensively left there by someone careless, let his hand go limp until John’s given a sigh and let go.

Which is not an easy thing to settle with. John’s got lovely hands.

Now, with everything either of them could say to possibly defuse the tension all crossed off, this seems fine.

 

This subject, this conversation, it started a long time ago, and will continue to live, as a slow drip-feed of gentle pushing and coaxing to remind Sherlock of this.

Nonetheless Sherlock has his own opinion of how he presents himself. Whether or not it’s irrational, it doesn’t matter; Sherlock does not want John to feel sorry for him.

“John, you’re the latest in a long line of people who have regarded me as being juvenile – I find it mildly annoying that it’s not your obligation to worry about me, even though to do so would be perfectly natural of you. And before you say it, I _don’t_ take you for granted.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. I don’t even think you do.”

Sherlock tilts his head. “You must do, from time to time.”

“Okay, I used to, but I don’t any more. At all. I suppose, things have changed a bit since then.”

John offers an easy smile. The swell of guilt and shame in Sherlock rises up again, just enough to stress that it’s still there.

“Sherlock, you’re not being childish. You’re just being… I don’t know what to call it. You’re like this a _lot_ sometimes – I should’ve known you’d be feeling a bit downtrodden after wrapping up the collie case, and if you’d tired yourself out then that’s got to be a good thing. But when I notice that you’re brooding over something, I just want you to know you don’t have to keep it to yourself.”

“Like what?”

 

John wants to say “Take a wild guess”, if just to keep to mood of the conversation light, but his eyes drop to the floor, and he pulls a face Sherlock would memorize in a heartbeat, cataloguing it and poring over it for hours, finding a thousand different subtleties of amused fondness all condensed into that one look. And this is of a John that has had nearly five years to fine-tune the so-called art of unspoken articulation. Sherlock knows that’s the face that says “I don’t know what to say,” and also that John would far rather actually say something, regardless of it being announcing his praise of Sherlock, or how preposterous he can be.

 

 

“Any cases?”

The change in the direction of their talk pops the tension like a soap bubble. “One, thus far, “ Sherlock starts, plucking his laptop seemingly out of thin air and showing John the message he’d been sent in the early hours of that morning: Samuel Owens, one of the latest unfortunate names added to London’s list of Missing People, who was last seen looking rather despondent at a bus stop close to Ealing Broadway nearly a fortnight ago, he’d sent an odd message to his niece Katie, three nights back. At first the police were very enthusiastic about this potential new lead, until Sam’s dead body arrived in the storehouse at the back of her shop. And now she’s terrified of any possible murder charges.

 

 

While John frowns at the strange medley of words, once they’re in a taxi and Sherlock’s finally handed it over, he begins a quick outline of this case’s back-story. “She’s something of an acquaintance of mine; last year I found her kidnapped sister-in-law, and proved the incident at the taxidermist’s studio was completely staged.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember when you told me about that. I actually thought the inside of a stuffed stag head would be a pretty good place to hide four grand’s worth of cannabis – “

“Yes, of course, well, after that case was closed we’d kept loosely in touch. She’s an ex-pat from the States, owns a rather exotic dressmaker’s just off Charing Cross Road, and used to work as understudy to someone who makes stage costumes.”

“You do know I haven’t met her, don’t you? You worked on that on your own.”

“Obviously.”

 

John considers this, as if something’s amiss. “What was I doing?”

For once Sherlock’s not tempted to spin a tall tale of trying out a sedative on him for the weekend. “Your then-girlfriend managed to persuade you to provide moral support, for her participating in an open mic evening.”

John realizes, and cringes visibly. “That was Madeleine, wasn’t it? Christ… she was terrified. And so deadpan, I think I fell asleep before she even got off the stage. She made your brother look like Louie Spence.”

“Who?”

“You don’t want to know.” John’s simultaneously glad of the fact he’s hopefully not going to encounter any of the exes who would be best off staying in the past, and deeply embarrassed for the memories. “Besides, she was the one who finished it – she caught me on the phone to you at three in the morning and said she didn’t want to interrupt anything I ‘already had on’.”

Maddie was fairly attractive, with sleek ebony hair and big grey eyes and taste for a gothic wardrobe: to John she had more than a slight air of Morticia Addams about her. But it’s probably the ideal time to drop the subject now; Sherlock would rarely seem to miss an opportunity to give John a reminder of how difficult a long-term girlfriend would be alongside Sherlock, and John was more in denial about this back then. And there’s a very slight chance that Sherlock’s even seen _The Addams Family_ , but _that_ conversation is definitely for later.

 

 

 

Sherlock considerably perks up with a dead body to get his paws on, and John is glad of that.

Katie’s boutique, part secondhand costume shop, part tailoring studio, is a charmingly cramped place, its high-ceilinged-walls piled high with rolls of fabric, filmy layers of dust over fleecy faux furs and heavily layered ornate patterns, gloriously baroque garments hanging from the picture rail and from the corners of high cupboards, and draped over every available flat surface. There’s a small gathering of Yarders already here, filling most of the little available space left; Lestrade’s supposed to be in serious conversation with Miss Owens herself, but that doesn’t stop him from loudly giving Sherlock a cheerily annoyed comment in his direction about maybe spending less time working on his psychic abilities and more on his answering his phone.

Sam’s probably been dead for a few hours already; John can surmise the gaudy pink-red splash over his left eye would have hurt, but the damage couldn’t have extended deep enough to kill him. Turning his head over, John finds more blood, matted thickly in his brick-dusty hair, from a brutal-looking beating, littered with dull metallic filings, over his occipital lobe. He thinks out loud, “Scalp wounds bleed freely. And It’d have to be confirmed, of course, but I’d be very surprised if that didn’t burst a blood vessel in his brain.”

Sherlock’s making out to look more interested in the bottoms of his trousers, and the streaks of dust in his clothes, but he’s carefully watching the time John puts into his study of the unfortunate man’s head. It’s simply intuitive, and Sherlock rarely acts on pure gut instinct, but for a few short seconds, he wants to trust it.

 

 

 

Katie’s just standing in the corner like a spare part, once she’s finished being interrogated. She’s quirky enough to match her shop, all reddish pixie crop and long strings of beads round her neck and a jackalope motif across the front of her fleece. John retires to the background alongside her, while Sherlock disappears into the depths of the back of the shop in search of murder weapons.

“Is this the usual arrangement, Dr Watson?” she asks in a low voice, like two slightly rebellious prefects stood at the back of class.

“Yep. You have to give your statement?”

“Once they’ve finished here. Sherlock’s off doing his thing already, but if he finds half an iron pipe in my storeroom, I’m a monkey’s uncle. I’ve only been here, what, an hour? What are _they_ ,” she motions towards the Yarders still flanking the rows of mannequins to their right, “going to find? Well, whatever happens here they won’t be happy with taking the place to pieces and putting it back together however way they want.”

John huffs cordially. “They’re really not as inept as Sherlock likes to think they are. They bring him on for weird ones, surprising ones, after spending all morning complaining about him. You have to consider they’re the ones who’re actually qualified, but Sherlock’s still the only one who can do the magic.”

 

 

Behind the storeroom door, the atmosphere gets even more eccentric. Crates and crates and crates, plastic and plywood, all labelled in twists of marker pen, nearly reach the ceiling, with the odd cobweb clinging to them, reaching from corners of the walls. A faded poster of The Smiths shines through the dimness, and there’s a row of shelves just inside the room, upon which several stuffed Muppets loll over each other. There’s what looks like a handful of long thin rubber fingers, a brilliant electric green and orange in colour, and it bounces down off a bench groaning under the weight of a sewing machine and half a replica Elizabethan-style ballgown, rolling across the floor like a little shy animal escaping its cage and looking for a hiding place. It settles beside where John’s standing. He’s still got latex gloves on, so he picks it up; it has some weight to it, and seems to have a life of its own. “Is this yours?”

“Oh, yeah, spiny rubber stress balls. That’s what I call them in front of other people. Because they’re far too much fun to not have lying around.”

“I thought it might be… I mean, the cuddly things sat up on their shelf, they haven’t been down from there for a while. And this is not exactly the kind of place you’d let kids loose in.”

Katie giggles awkwardly. “I know, right – you should see my apartment upstairs. Full of dolls. I know I should’ve grown out of them ages ago – “

“Oh, don’t worry about _that_.” John nearly starts laughing surreptitiously as well – if anyone knows what the full spectrum of childishness looks like, it has to be him. He says it at if he’s sharing the password of a secret society. The fact that Sherlock met her first does offer lip service to the fact that she can share the sentiment with John, and it comes very naturally; while Sherlock goes into his trademark detachment to put his logical mind to work, John offers a different breed of insight, as the sounding pad for Sherlock’s sense of humanity.

 

 

“Bearing all this in mind, something unsavoury certainly happened to him before he died here.” Sherlock’s voice is muffled in the abundance of fabric and cardboard, head first in the organized chaos as he peers at the skirting and up the cupboards with his magnifier. The sergeant stood practically above him has a beautiful look of confusion on her face.

“This one ought to be dusted for prints,” he says pointedly, producing a garment made of sheepskin, torn messily right up the back, not following the grain of the fabric so the tear winds in wild directions, the lustre of its surface distorted with the drag of someone’s fingers. Katie doesn’t look best pleased.

 

“Don’t think about your contents insurance policy just yet,” John quips to her, before leaning forward to receive the jacket, folding it to fit the evidence bag and trying not to smear the fingermarks any further. His proximity to Sherlock is more than close enough.

 

He has to look again once he’s handed the bag over, knowing he doesn’t have much time before Sherlock straightens up and smoothes the dust from his hair and the folds of his coat, and he’s well out of the sunbeam from the window above their heads. Their height difference seems to yawn wider, as the raw clear sight of what John’s just witnessed begins to sink in.

The bare gaps on Sherlock’s head couldn’t possibly be the result of some accident the idiot might have had with a threshing machine: they’d been hidden neatly in the rest of his hair, and it’s not one wide even patch of thinning, but a small scattered cluster of them. He’d been impeccably careful with selecting the least overt place for hair to go missing, as there’s already a fine layer of it starting to grow back, like dark suede. John doesn’t need to be reminded of how tolerant he can be, of Sherlock’s unpredictable pattern of stubbornly requesting privacy – God alone knows how long John’s unknowingly let this happen behind his back.

But what hits John hardest, is the thought of Sherlock deeming himself deserving of this. His hair is part of his uniform, it has a lot of effort put into it to keep it in good condition, it’s part of the means Sherlock has to appear the professional he very much is. And during lazier moments it looks just as good, if not better, tousled and relaxed while Sherlock broods on the sofa like a dragon upon its hoard. It’s effortless. What exactly does pulling it out achieve, from his point of view – the pain might be horrible, or just enough to irritate him, eating into the carapace of his mind like woodworm. John’s seen plenty of melodramatic, and violent, attempts at Sherlock alleviating his boredom, with results just as varied, but this just seems completely backwards. It doesn’t make any sense for him to do this.

 

Sherlock turns, and immediately he sees what John’s looking at. The surprise of it overtakes him, momentarily, and seeing shock on Sherlock’s face makes John’s own morph from misunderstanding, to a sobering concern. Not pity, though: John’s surprised at the lack of pity for what Sherlock’s felt. Maybe it’s because of the moment. John’s head swims, as he tries and fails to find words. It’s like time has stumbled and missed a few seconds, in the surrealism of the moment.

Sherlock clearly does _not_ look like he wants pity. As John’s gaze shifts from his hair to his eyes, Sherlock is no longer shocked, but angry. Deeply, profoundly angry. His restraint on it is concrete-enforced, which just seems to make it even worse; even if it's only temporary, he can gloss over it, and they'll both slip back into acting like everything's fine.

The truth is that Sherlock is fuming at himself, for, first of all, letting the good mood of the morning get spoilt, and also, breaking the promise he unconsciously made, just a few minutes ago, to not let John find out the same way the other people who know did. And thirdly, being so in denial. He’s managed to keep John’s attention diverted from it for long enough; how could he think it could last that long? John would see for himself soon enough, that prickling voice in his head has said, plenty of times by now. Sherlock just can’t make excuses for himself. He never could – he kept putting it off, living in a pretence day after day while it could last – and now he never will get the chance.

 

John exhales, at last, and Sherlock nearly doesn’t hear him breathe “ _For fuck’s sake,_ ” as he steps warily past him, and back into the shop.


	4. His First Cut

As they step through the narrow doorway, over the festoon of debris and crime scene tape, Sherlock’s got his guise of composure back on, barely before John can notice. Probably because, deep down, Sherlock might have known, unconsciously, what to do in such an emergency. In the unlikely event of someone, _anyone_ , seeing – in a fleeting dart of time, which might be long enough for them to decide how to react to it. Maybe say something in haste, ask something inappropriate, or simply stare. Staring is just as bad. It’s either silent caution out of embarrassment and naïve discretion, or it’s hostility through refusal to make a comment. Announcing the presence of something bad, deliberately without voicing it. And, complete incognito, John’s still trying to fully comprehend what he’s just seen. There are a lot of moments in his recent memory where Sherlock would have had a chance to go and conceal himself somewhere and… and do… _that_. John can’t even find a description of it that fits properly. Of course he knows what it is, he knows about it, he’s _seen_ it, a few times, in the position of someone who deals with problems like this for a living; he of all people should be difficult to scare. But probably the worst thing about it, is that if John knows Sherlock, which he does, he should know Sherlock would have to be ignorant beyond reason to not have worked this out already.

Maybe that’s why he’s kept hiding it. By definition _this_ is a mere side-effect of something more enigmatic, more complicated, something harder to explain, even to oneself, than simply _‘I pull my own hair out’_. It’d be perfectly like Sherlock to say those exact words with a short-tempered pique to his voice, scorning John for needing to have the obvious explained out to him, especially something he just might have seen before in a professional capacity.

Yet, at the same time, a big cornerstone of their relationship is their understanding of how the other’s mind works, how their thought processes would go, what the other would prioritize. It’s what makes them so seamless as a two-part working team. And they’re learning strange unexpected nuances about each other all the time, which sometimes rivals their shared draw towards danger like moths to flames, as what keeps day-to-day life interesting.

But this is bigger than that. This is serious. A sit down in somewhere quiet, with little or no chance of anyone interrupting, for a straightforward, prudently worded conversation, is what might be required to get Sherlock convinced that he can trust John with this, and trust himself to let John know the full extent of it. The fact that they’re at a crime scene instead is displeasing enough; John hasn’t breathed another word, but he already knows enough. Sherlock isn’t going to want to get patronized by being told, outright or not, that there’s something wrong with him, and John finding out under these circumstances hasn’t done anything to help.

 

For someone who digs for logic so thoroughly in everything he can get his hands on, Sherlock is not going to admit anything out of sorts with himself quite as readily. The reason of this ambiguity seems so obvious now: Sherlock’s already perfected the art of hiding in plain sight. And now, the chink in his armour discovered, he’s brushing the last of the dust out of his hair – or so it appears. He’s really adjusting everything back into place to disguise all the little thin patches; within seconds everything’s tidied up again. It’s as if there really is nothing wrong at all. Anyone taking a passing look at them wouldn’t suspect a single thing.

 

 

“You okay, Sherlock?” John’s voice is a fraction of what he’d expected it to be. It sounds almost as insubstantial as the dust in the air around them.

“ _Yes_. I am okay. I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine. There’s nothing to worry about. Stop worrying about me. Why are you? You don’t need have any need to whatsoever. What would there be any reason to think otherwise?” Sherlock’s dry sudden reply has gone a bit choked up. He wasn’t exactly prepared for this.

 

Peering oddly at each other, there’s some kind of disconnection here. And before John has got even close to deciding what to do next, Sherlock has stalked past him, into the fray of officers, most of them in various states on the scale of ‘Look busy, the boss is about’. As always they glance sideways at him, he the indiscriminate favourite prefect; the sergeant clutching a handful of eccentric objects wrapped in plastic looking more sheepish than all the others combined. Neither Sherlock nor Lestrade seem to take any notice.

Which, somehow, is enough of a surprise. It seems to be a surprise that everything’s still going as normal. Sherlock can’t deny it is, even though every fragment of consciousness in his brain is bursting. He’s forgotten everything about how to keep breathing. His rage hasn’t dampened, but it has spiked all over the place, accented with alarm and defensiveness, self-consciousness tipped right off the scale, because he’s out in the open now. And by some miraculous turn of events, there’s someone at the fore who won’t ask, and knows not to. He’s the official boss of everyone in the vicinity, and with the ability to shut up anyone who says anything.

Well. Sherlock is madly hoping they won’t. If he just keeps up his steel composure, _nobody’s going to notice…_

 

“Found anything?”

“No murder weapon. There’s been a fight in the storeroom, but I’m not sure whether or not Mr Owens died here. But I think our next port of call is this address.”

The weird scrap of paper is back under the spotlight – John still doesn’t know what it is.

Sherlock holds it up to the light, to illuminate all the variations in the concentration of printer ink. They shine through like a hidden message on a piece of parchment. “I won’t be too specific about the first bit, but the end is a street address, with a receipt from this shop printed off-centre over the top, dated two days ago.”

John’s confusion is slowly starting to lift, even though his voice still sounds a bit strange. “But why would… ?”

Thankfully Lestrade’s got his head firmly on. “Could be a fluke. Someone underestimated the drying time of their pen ink.”

“Or maybe that’s how they wanted it to appear. Someone who needed an alibi.”

“Okay, Sherlock, can you slow down a gear? How do you fit that together with – “

“I’ll explain that later. After we find whatever it was that actually killed him.”

 

 

About fifteen minutes later, John and Lestrade are stood just outside the window of the dilapidated house a few streets away, with some room in front of them for Sherlock to climb back out of the ground floor window. Weighed down with Sherlock’s scarf and coat, John holds them like he’s holding a disgruntled animal, and every few seconds, an indiscriminate piece of rubbish comes diving through the window and landing on the pavement. The two of them are a couple of feet apart so most of the debris ends up missing them. It almost resembles a daft scene from a 70s or 80s situation comedy, and more importantly, Sherlock’s hopefully busy enough to not be listening to what’s going on outside. Which is what they want to think – Sherlock’s close enough to the opening to the outside world to hear it all. The noises piled over one another, as Sherlock turns over the butchered pieces of furniture, do little to drown out the two voices outside.

“Listen, Greg, I need to ask you something.”

“Right, is it important?”

“It’s about Sherlock.”

The three little words that can rearrange everyone’s priorities.

 

John’s done this before. Sherlock has to give John credit for this: they both know the likely outcome of a conversation about personal things, but also, they know ignoring them isn’t going to help at all. It’s all very well thinking about how Sherlock can think outside the box, but where John can take the initiative, and be tactful when doing so, is when ‘it’s about Sherlock’.

“Well, first of all, I’m going to try and be discreet. I know what he’s like about being insensitive, so I have to work around that, whenever I’m trying to get him to take care of himself… and because, sometimes, getting worked up about it really isn’t worth it, I just keep my mouth shut.”

 

Lestrade gives an amused sigh. “Well, I wish more people were as smart as that.”

“So do I.”

“So what did you actually want to ask?”

 

John’s guts begin to sink. “I’m not assuming that you know anything about it, but he’ll get pissed off if I confront him about it.”

“About?”

“I think Sherlock’s been pulling his hair out.”

 

Lestrade turns rather disconcerted-looking. John can nearly see the whites of his eyes, as the silence that follows his confession lingers on and on, too long for the inspector to say if he doesn’t know what John has just brought up.

“If you didn’t ask him, how did you find out?”

“While he was looking through all the stuff in the storeroom in Katie’s shop I saw… it as he was crouched over. I didn’t say anything, but he knew. He knew I’d seen.”

“Of course.”

John picks his words carefully. “Yep. He’s Sherlock. He knows about things like this. And if I’ve only found out now, he’s got to have been hiding it for ages. The longer something like that gets left, the harder it is to start talking about it.”

“I know. It’s not exactly something you expect, is it? It was about four years ago, and I found him in a corner of the post-mortem room at Bart’s one night after everyone had left… he’d had a pretty bad day, and he was just sat there like he was on a comedown with a handful of his own hair on the floor in front of him. I’d been hoping for hours that he wouldn’t start a scene, but it turned out that this was his kind of coping mechanism. That’s all I know about it.”

 

The silence that nervously follows gets broken by an unidentifiable piece of rubbish sailing through the window. They both dodge out of the way, Lestrade warily watching it as it bounces into the undergrowth behind them, trying not to think of mentioning the word _asbestos_ ; John doesn’t seem too bothered by it.

 

“But I think it’s weird, that he’s kept quiet. I’d thought he’d have told you.”

Bearing in mind he’s only just found out that Lestrade knows about it, John’s already compiling a shortlist of other people to ask if they know. And he realizes he needs to find out how long this has been going on for. John could ask, but that would sound far too much like Sherlock is some sort of special needs boy whose parents need to be sat down in a corner of the classroom for a carefully eloquent chat after the end of the day.

So instead he offers, “After that, did anyone mention it again?”

Lestrade clearly wants to answer, but he’s lost on getting the words out. They morph into a jovial, awkward laugh. “Well… about a fortnight afterwards, he’d made me promise to never let anyone know about what I’d caught him doing, and by anyone I mean anyone in the Yard. I kept my trap shut, but of course that doesn’t mean anything goes to plan.”

John gives him the benefit of the doubt. “I’d hope that wouldn’t be too much to ask for.”

“Yes. But things don’t really go to plan at a crime scene.”

“So, there have been a few accidents but you can’t tell me about them.”

“I can’t, I’m afraid. I am sorry, but I can’t. I really wish I could, but I don’t want to bring up anything legally awkward or anything I’ll seriously regret. But, I’ll tell you a story…”

 

Oh, this’ll be good. This is something he’d once been very angry about, something Lestrade wants to get off his chest. John can’t help grinning. Inside, Sherlock freezes, but he wants to hear John’s reaction to _this_ anecdote.

“Sounds like something I’ll wish I didn’t know once you’ve told me.”

Lestrade’s got a hand over his brow, still chuckling, but trying to swallow it down. “Well, I guess. I don’t know if I should say it out loud, it’s terrible. It _is_ funny… ”

John’s not laughing. Every now and then everyone gets reminded that Sherlock Holmes does have some credibility as an actual functioning member of polite society, instead of an inhumanely antisocial insulting machine, and it’s no accident. John knows that, out of them both, he’s the one who gets the open respect from the professionals, or rather, is the one who acts like he knows how to earn it, and, perhaps more importantly, he can prove it without being reminded to.

“Alright, John, on your head be it. Six months later, we’d found a serial date-rapist hiding out by Putney Bridge, and Sherlock had a bit of a showdown with his latest victim, and she had alopecia, right… don’t get awkward, wait until you’ve heard all of it. This poor girl, she wasn’t that uncomfortable about it, but she did get a bit upset about… well, she got into an argument with Sherlock because her headscarf had slipped off and apparently this was how she’d managed to make a getaway. And for whatever reason he wanted her to reenact the scenario. I’d had to give him a word of warning beforehand, just to tell him I didn’t want this to get inappropriate – but I wanted to remind him that _nobody_ else knew about the… whatsit, it’s called… ”

“Trichotillomania.”

 

Lestrade pauses, pulling a puzzled frown at John, considering what the doctor has just said.

“Compulsive hair pulling.” John explains. “It’s caused by some forms of anxiety, stress, some mental disorders, and because of that, each case is a bit different. There isn’t one exact thing that makes someone start it, but the obvious symptom that results from it, is the loss of hair from pulling it out.”

“Ah, alright.”

“The thing is, most people don’t know about it because it is a bit of a taboo subject. It’s strange how people can turn to something like it, when they can’t deal with stress any other way.”

“Which was probably what I was annoyed at, and I knew it wouldn’t be fair on him. I knew he needed some kind of help for it, because this was different.”

 

This time they both understand. John doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll be considering this again, and he’ll need to if he wants Sherlock to have the courage to open up.

 

Lestrade promptly returns to his cautionary tale. “That’s all well and good, but that’s completely beside the point. It doesn’t all come out evenly. It makes patches, so they shave it all off so it looks even. It looks better than most people think it does. And there are places where people can have a wig made for them. But Sherlock made a point of telling everyone so. That was what she was really annoyed about. It didn’t seem to matter to her or anyone else involved, until Sherlock had told us how he’d got to his conclusion.”

“This does sound like the kind of thing you’d tell a group of people to win a drunk game of kiss-and-tell.”

“I know, but just imagine it, seeing this at a crime scene, this bloke everyone vaguely recognizes from the papers and your blog, arguing with this bald girl, talking about the various tensile strengths of different brands of vintage silk. That was all I got to see myself, and I was already cross enough with him because of what I’d heard about this girl, but when I saw them arguing over scarves, surrounded by constables looking ready to hang themselves, it was funny, for about two seconds… what? I did warn you. You look appalled.”

John tries not to cringe and giggle at the same time. “Greg, it’s just… I can picture him doing that far too easily.”

 

“John, _what_ did you say?!” Sherlock’s voice suddenly demands, his tousled head emerging out from the window.

“Erm… nothing… I didn’t – I said nothing…”

“I’m going to kill you in your sleep.” Sherlock grits his teeth and his voice darkens into a menacing growl.

“Are you?” John replies wearily. “I’m amazed that you didn’t succumb to the temptation years ago.”

The mischief of sharing forbidden stories certainly might add some fuel to that fire. From where he is, Sherlock looks like he simply wants to tear a hole into the side of the house. Lestrade dissolves back into utterly hopeless laughter; John pretends he can’t hear him say “ _When_ are you two gonna get married?”

 

Sherlock climbs back through the window, hands Lestrade a rather battered-looking table lamp wrapped in clear plastic, before primly shaking dust off his clothes. John doesn’t breathe another word; he’s relieved, that his gamble, to not confront Sherlock straightaway seems to have paid off. John had wanted to encourage him without piling on the pressure, even though he probably would never have thought of this particular impartial third party, had the circumstances been any different.

Still, it _has_ to be crime scene, doesn’t it? Somehow, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else where it could be. It’s so obvious. Sherlock sighs, taking a moment to remind himself of the many times John has taken him by surprise, with something unbelievably mundane, yet just as remarkable. Odd things that he’d never imagine himself doing, or even suggest to someone else to do. John’s broken rules, and left them unfinished so Sherlock can redefine them.

And just as it seems to be getting cold out here, John has unfolded out the Belstaff and is helping him into it. He wraps the scarf round his neck, and, with a softened “Come here,” he plants a deft kiss on Sherlock’s nose, in the few seconds they have left alone together before Lestrade summons them again – it takes him by surprise, the warming effect of something so chaste. And it’s so irritating having such pale skin, so a blush is so infuriatingly obvious. That _way_ John looks at him makes something deep in his chest ache.

 

 

They’re not left alone again, until hours later, when they’re outside NSY and waiting for a taxi to rock up. All day, they’ve judiciously kept focused on the case, silently acknowledging what John had discovered earlier, and by now Sherlock should have had long enough to decide how to respond to it.

Thankfully John’s busy peering down the road for the oncoming traffic, so Sherlock remains wandering through everything he’s added to his collection of hair-pulling rules and case-studies. He watches the misty cloud of his breath float upwards, eyes and head up so hopefully the thin patches are suitably out of sight.

“John… I just want to clarify for you, the events surrounding catching the Putney Bridge rapist were a rather serendipitous regrettable moment I have since hoped would never be repeated to anyone, certainly anyone of a weak constitution.”

Lestrade was right, it was funny. Perhaps in ways John can appreciate more than others. “Never happened. As far as anyone knows.”

“Yes, that was the general idea. You don’t need yet another example of how nonsensical I am.”

Sherlock’s announcing the statement in such a caustic voice, it’s as if he’s not just cross with himself for starting the argument with the girl, but starting it around other people who would share the story of it at a later date. Normally, so far as Sherlock is concerned, Yarders don’t exactly count as ‘other people’, and the fact that he has such a low opinion of them, means that he wouldn’t know if they had a warped sense of humour, or a non-existent one, until it’s a bit too late.

Yet John’s losing the fight to keep himself pulling a smile.

“What do you mean – that I should be used to you? Used to the general revulsion the rest of the world has for you? If I’m honest, I guess I’d find that appalling, but no one can do anything about it now.”

Sherlock pulls a crinkled irritated face, which John is tempted to imitate, if it might make Sherlock laugh.

This is when the anxiety-rush kicks in. Sherlock wants so badly to not have such a frantic, incredulous opinion of himself, and the abrasive side that unfortunate ordinary people encounter. Ordinary people may be impossibly tedious to interact with, but Sherlock can’t quite find it in his heart to blame them for keeping their distance from him, even if he does still have his commendable traits.

At the same time, they don’t come more ordinary than John – and he’s the one who can laugh at all this.

“Well, if that’s the case, then why do I not believe that?”

“It’s my opinion, Sherlock. You don’t have to believe it. And what’s important, is not that everyone thinks it’s horrific and funny, but that you can learn from it. So it won’t happen again.”

 

Somehow, Sherlock doesn’t feel self-assured at all anymore. He takes too long to come up with a monstrously witty comeback, and finds himself giving John his juvenile pout.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that!” John retorts in a summery tone. “Look, dirty secret, okay? I get it. _I’ve_ done stupid things, and I don’t like the sound of anyone finding out about them. But if you can put them into perspective, then hopefully there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Thank you for the reassurance.” Sherlock replies in a bone-dry voice.

“Oh, shut up…” John winds his arm round Sherlock’s, and pretends to give him a shake. “I don’t want you to think you can’t tell me anything. You _can_ tell me anything… to be honest, I wish you’d told me sooner.”

Sherlock hesitates, but he wants to be brave and ask.

John looks him in the eye. “There. It’s out now.”

 

Now Sherlock’s in a state of absolute confusion. “You are talking about… ?”

John seems to have the nerve to actually start giggling. “You can be _such_ an idiot sometimes, you know. And I thought you’d find it totally obvious, and then you’d have at go at me for not understanding… ”

Sherlock refuses to pry any further. It might be better if they’re not out in public, because this could turn into another potential massive embarrassment so easily.

“And I thought _I_ could be callous. Really, John, if you didn’t think I have a heart, I’d let you think I would want you to pretend I’m not idiotic out of politeness.” Sherlock doesn’t sound very sarcastic any more.

“That’s rich coming from you. You’re rude to everyone.”

“I love you.”

“And if we weren’t on our own, you’d never… what?”

Sherlock’s wounded puppy-dog eyes are on full force now. John’s words fail him suddenly, and he goes a startling shade of pink, puffing out an almost-laugh.

“I love you, John. I know it’s not healthy to be this idiotic, but if I have a compulsion to pull my own hair out, I can’t be a picture of psychological health anyway. Besides, you yourself are an idiot as well, while genuinely being a wonderful person, with the good grace to think as highly of me as you do.”

 

John’s speechless. He could be forgiven, for thinking that Sherlock would say that and sound like he’s complimenting himself instead – that is, if he wouldn’t scoff at sentimentality like he normally does. But he doesn’t now. Now the tone of his voice, in fact all his expression has dropped to something that can almost be described as humbled. He sounds like he feels privileged to understand that his feelings are being realized. Like he owes this to John, and ought to repay him every scrap of praise Sherlock’s had from him.

Maybe John believes it because of what he learned earlier today. Sherlock can’t do very much that will shock him, but John did think, for long enough to believe it, that there is little chance of Sherlock announcing something like this.

John wants to say he loves him as well, but words are still caught in the back in his throat, and it’s made just that bit worse by a taxi with its light on has just passed.

“What am I going to do with you, Sherlock?” he asks, almost to himself, turning back to the street, if just to ensure Sherlock doesn’t get full view of how flattered he is.


	5. The Talisman of Stress Relief

_Idiot._

_Idiot. First Class IDIOT. You didn’t just tell him that you…_

It sings in Sherlock’s head like propaganda, wildly flashing pyrotechnics, like the street lamps that all light up so early now; it’s pitch black by five at this time of the year. Throughout the entire cab journey home – some five minutes of unrefined awkwardness later, one did turn up outside the Yard – Sherlock has his head bowed down, feeling utterly deflated, his eyes going fuzzy as he stares at the cross-grained blackness at their feet.

 _That is hands-down the stupidest thing you’ve ever done._ What _were you thinking?! What did you think John would say to it? He’s never going to take you seriously again, after you say something that stupid to him. Do you honestly think he’d want to hear that from you?_

The last thing Sherlock can remember seeing clearly of John, is that he’s covering his eyes, if anything, in absolute shock. In that way that people do, completely obscuring their face, when they are in such a state. That famously twitchy left hand of his is scratching the felted surface near against the door handle.

_Look at him! What is he thinking of you?_

Sherlock actually doesn’t get to see any of John’s face throughout the whole trip, which makes it all about a million times worse. Perhaps it’s a shame as John is amazed for all the right reasons and simply hadn’t been expecting this – any of this – throughout nearly the entire day… instead Sherlock simply keeps his head dropped, his attempt to keep the misery held back from any external showing all utterly futile. He’s close to the point of rejoicing when the brass-adorned black front door of 221B appears at the window, and bounces out the door at the soonest opportunity.

 

“ ‘S he alright?” asks the mildly confused driver; John tries to brush it off, as he hands over the fare.

“Been a long… mad day. He’s okay.”

Well. John hopes he is, watching the detective’s tall sweeping figure leaning on the doorframe, half-lit in the orange street light, his face shrouded in shadow.

“Keep the change. ‘Night.” John finishes off, a little hastily – leaving Sherlock’s side for very long doesn’t sound like a nice idea.

Sherlock’s fishing for his keys in his deep pockets, at least, he is now. He’d been alone for a precious few seconds at the door under the light, just long enough to acknowledge the sheer outrageous thing he’s just _said_ , after very much a long mad day, after years, _long_ years of tense silence and tugging painfully at the seam between them.

Maybe, in the impulsiveness of it, in one mad magnificent moment, it finally felt like it had gone on for long enough.

They’re both well aware of what they’d had to stagger through to get to where they are now; indeed, perhaps all its important points are mapped in hairless specks across the expanse of Sherlock’s scalp. It took something big, something tormenting, from them, to survive, and eventually beat the psychopathic characters that drove them apart, and it took a lot of heartache to find each other again. For weeks, they were pretty much back where they began again, and if Sherlock would be absolutely honest, this was all he felt he had a right to hope for. In this regard, Sherlock stubbornly continued trying to convince himself that nothing will change from here. Despite all his hoping for the right moment to tell John how he feels about him, his not knowing how John would respond, on top of how Sherlock relentlessly thinks himself unworthy of a man like him, has made him keep his mouth shut.

Why, what can Sherlock offer, if anything more than what their life together had been over more than five years? More than the adrenaline rushes, and unpredictability, and escapades, and the illusion of a normal life that John wishes for, while longing for the thrill ride. He’s wondered if John thinks Sherlock is incapable of sharing his heart, even if either of them would consider such an idea.

It’s likely he’ll deny saying it, if or when in due course anyone will ask if he did. Yes, he already regrets it: he barely gave it any thought before he let himself say it. Which, almost cruelly, is totally beside the point – after all this time, after them both going to hell and back again and again, Sherlock finds he can no longer deny that he loves John. It just feels so easy to disclose it.

 

Sherlock disappears off into the dark of the building the second John pushes the door open. He ignores John’s calls after him, as well as Mrs Hudson’s excessively asking what’s going on. The ridiculous coat ends up heavily dropped somewhere on the banisters, and Sherlock shuts a door behind him, to enclose himself in dark. Leaning back, craning his head up to try and force down a deep breath, his eyes are stinging, and he didn’t even realise it, thinking it was nothing more than the cold outside. His hand is fisted tight in his hair, tugging at indiscriminate bits of it. He can feel the familiar prickling of strands coming out. Pain drips through his scalp like water through a leaking ceiling, so he can fixate on that instead, and he barely cares about it. The loose strands – not all of them were tugged out in this room – remain clinging to his fingers, as his hand drops down, landing against the door beside him. The unshed tears bite hard in his eyes, but they all get blinked away soon enough.

For a couple of forlorn hours, Sherlock is sat against the closed door, alternating between meditating on a man’s full capacity for stupidity, playing with the strands of hair he’d pulled out until they weaken and break one by one, and enduring John’s voice on the other side of the door going “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me but you can’t stay in there forever… Sherlock? I can wait just as long as you can,” until he can’t bear listening to the dulled pain steadily growing in John’s voice any more.

 

Sherlock can’t find the nouce to move. At least, until the hours have passed and John has thrown in the towel and left the door. John doesn’t want to find himself falling asleep in the corner of the kitchen, and although it hurts to find he has given up the waiting game, Sherlock’s a bit thankful that he’s not around to see Sherlock in this state. Of course John’s seen Sherlock in worse states: drugged and wasted and injured and beaten to exhaustion, over the years – _what does_ this _matter, in comparison to them? –_ yet his knowledge of these bitter moments are woven into the tapestry of their life together. Somehow there must have been something that mattered there, because over those years John has had opportunities aplenty to decide that life with the irrepressible Sherlock just too much, and leave it, and still he’s here. That fact makes Sherlock feel better during times when it feels like those years wasted away.

 

Here in the dark, John feels so far away, even though he’s no further away than the distance between this floor and the one above it. Just a flight of stairs. Sherlock feels bereft, left down here, and thinking of the beginning of the day, when he would have been wondering how much more he’d have to do to tell John that he loves him.

_Damn love. What is it all truly worth, if this is what it means to be in love? Who would even want to give up their heart, if this is what they would get in exchange?_

All of a sudden it’s half past two in the morning, the tears have dried into a sticky gloss over his eyelids, and the violin case catches Sherlock’s eye, sat demurely next to his armchair. He gets it out and lays it in his lap, still brooding while tightening the pegs, and trying each open note, slowly winding over melodies and they sink into little drab songs that don’t seem to have a definite start or end. Eventually he abandons the butchered chords and proceeds to simply run his fingertips over the strings of the bow, back and forth until they’re sore and tired – bowstrings are much harsher than his own hair. But it’s repetitive, which makes it somewhat therapeutic, in spite of the sore fingers. No doubt John will get back to sleep now the conflicting pieces of music have thinned out.

 

 

The temperature severely drops the next morning. John is not going to try prising Sherlock out of his hideaway, not when he actually went to bed at God-knows-when, and certainly not when he’s got a very long boring day of work ahead of him. Instead Sherlock languishes within the walls of his room waiting for the previous night to get forgotten, before eventually emerging. A hot shower and a black coffee, and a few dozen pages of crime scene analysis and a pile of books on venomous animals later, he’s come to the decision to get some fresh air, while it’s still light.

Wandering round Regent’s Park, and heading towards Westminster with an idea to drop in on the Diogenes Club members, which, once he’d arrived, wisely got rejected – Sherlock can practice being alone with his thoughts, gathering them up properly. Being sat in one place really doesn’t help. Sherlock’s too easily distracted. Furthermore, doing this helps a bit with the anxiety. People pass him in the street virtually constantly, and actually being there, rather than thinking and worrying about it, helps him reaffirm the idea that people minding their own business aren’t going to see if anything’s amiss with Sherlock, and therefore aren’t going to care. Spending the afternoon at Bart’s, the time begins to seriously fly; someone mildly deranged asks for him to confirm an alibi, by meticulously going over a laptop keyboard with cotton buds and a decent amount of patience, and the skyline is turning lilac by the time that’s done. John should be home by now, but he hasn’t texted yet, and Sherlock has another go at Not Worrying.

 

 

221B is perfectly quiet, even though John’s coat is there. The landing looks pristine, the houseplants bone-dry. Mrs Hudson clearly isn’t here. Oh, and the thermostat is still turned low.

“John? Are you about?” Sherlock frowns into the landing, as he turns the thermostat up, and then takes off his coat. “The temperature’s low enough outside, but if it gets any colder in here we might need to evolve blubber and waterproof fur. John?”

Peering into the living room, the sight that greets him is not exactly what he’d been expecting. Wrapped up in a thick blanket, John is curled up on the sofa, like a cat trying to sleep under a dining chair. Sherlock pulls a bemused face.

“Oh, I see. You’ve taken up hibernation.”

A soft voice emerges from under those layers. “Hi.”

Sherlock presses a hand on what is hopefully John’s shoulder. “Been like that for a while, haven’t you?”

“I’m cold.” John simply replies.

“Evidently.” Sherlock turns the television on before dropping the remote control on the sofa beside his still curled up flatmate, and picks a handful of papers up from the coffee table. “Perhaps the season of hideous jumpers could do with a commemorative holiday. Oh, wait… ”

Carefully unfolding himself, John chuckles lightly, rubbing the heel of his hand against his eyes. “Nice day?”

“Mm. Suitably boring.”

“Same here. Well. I think there are a few things we ought to talk about. About what, er, happened last night. We don’t need to start right now, but I want to talk to you about it.”

Sherlock looks warily at him, slowly starting to look spooked, even though John’s got one of his best kind faces on. He doesn’t want to turn this into something daunting, and why should he – the secret Sherlock keeps isn’t exactly a secret any more, and John has had long enough by now to adjust to his surprise last night. Those caring deep blue eyes look apologetic, and thankful that Sherlock’s had his moment of being frank, to give John some confidence of what _he_ looks like he wants to profess. John gets up, and has just let go of Sherlock’s forearms, as though for an odd moment they might both need a hug.

That’ll come later.

 

“Tea?”

“Please. Listen, I don’t know how long you were out for. But I did wonder if you’d organised some time to sort the fridge out.”

Filling the kettle, Sherlock gives a hesitant look sideways at John opening the fridge door. “For starters, we’re going to run out of milk pretty soon.”

“Is there enough to last until tomorrow?”

“I think tomorrow’s pushing it. Just how much do you and your bacteria samples get through every week?”

John’s voice is muffled into the fridge, so he sounds like he’s asking himself. Until he emerges holding a sealed but dubious Tupperware box containing what looks unlikely to qualify as organic material. “Sherlock, what’s this?” he sighs in that voice that’s more faint exasperation and amusement than question.

“Erm…”

“Actually, forget that, just, how long has it been there?”

“That was at the back, wasn’t it?”

“Behind the green thing, yes.”

“That one’s been there, about six and a half days.”

“Get rid of it, now, please. And not in the recycling bin again!”

 

On his return trip, Sherlock discovers on his armchair, is a bright royal blue rubber hairball, another one of the spiny stress toys, the same variety as the electric green and orange one John found in Katie Owens’ shop. This one’s brand new, its stiff spines still encased in its card label.

“What’s this?” Sherlock promptly quizzes John, from the other side of the room.

“Oh that? I spotted it on the way home. It’s for you.”

“I gathered that,” Sherlock remarks, crossing the room, while examining it. “but what exactly did you think I would do, with a Koosh Ball?”

“Er… ” The sceptical expression on Sherlock’s face, that John was fairly confident would result in his discovering his new stress-reliever, makes him regret not practicing something to suitably answer this very question. “It’s a bit low-tech, but it might help with the hair-pulling. If your hands need something to do, you can play with that. Or you can slice it up and disfigure it with hydrochloric acid, if you’d rather.”

Sherlock gives a shrug, and opens the card to look at the blue rubber being properly. It sits plump in his hands, the way one might hold a small tame animal. “Well, thank you for the thought. I understand how that would make sense.”

Mostly out of relief, John breaks into a smile. “My pleasure. And, last night I told you that I don’t want you to think you can’t tell me anything. If you feel bad about… this, then that’s fine. It’s a natural thing that happens when you have a problem with anxiety. And I want to help you, and I don’t want you to think something inside your head is broken, somehow - ”

“By definition, there’s an abnormality in there, something unhealthy, that affects some aspect of my life.” Sherlock interrupts bluntly.

“Well, yes. But I, well… ” There’s an edge in John’s voice, and it’s defensive. It doesn’t want him to agree with this definition. “I don’t like the thought of you being like that.”

“You are a doctor. Your work relies on diagnosis by analyzing symptoms.”

“I _know_. I’m not a therapist, but I’d refer someone to one. If we both think it would help.”

Sherlock presses his lips together, his eyes hard. John breathes a little easier. “I don’t want to make you sit through uncomfortable lectures. I know you’d hate it. And there are other ways of helping someone who tries to deal with unwanted tension in a harmful sort of way. This is one of them.” John’s hand rests on Sherlock’s, holding the Koosh ball, to illustrate his point.

“Mind you, I want to ask you a few things about the hair-pulling, and I’ll be able to help you properly once I’ve done so.”

Sherlock exhales through his teeth. “What do you want to know?”

 

In a soft voice, John invites him to sit down. Sherlock looks about as comfortable as he would if he’d sat down with a cactus in his lap, slightly hunched forward, jaw clenched, hands firmly pressed together. But he doesn’t say anything.

“Sherlock, we can do this later,” John says primly into the quiet; Sherlock gives him the narrow sideways look normally reserved for people being moronic.

John’s hand slides off his own lap and onto Sherlock’s. “Believe it or not, I do notice when you slope off. Of course I doubt that means I remember all the times you do, so I bet there are times when you do that to get away from an uncomfortable situation, and if I was even remotely observant I guess I’d notice the difference.”

Eyes fixed on the floor, Sherlock doesn’t look like he’s listening, but he is, and John isn’t going to make him say that out loud.

“I didn’t really know, until now, just how much these things hurt you. I spent most of last night wondering what it must be like to feel like this. And about five minutes later I realized that wasn’t a clever idea.”

The hard fervent edge to his voice is back. “I was angry at myself, Sherlock. Because I’m supposed to take care of you, and _this_ has been under my nose for _all this time_ and I didn’t even know… how often does it happen?”

Sherlock exhales slowly. “Every so often. Whenever I do something stupid. When I should know better than to be as reckless as I am.”

“Right… and why this? Pulling out your hair?”

The obvious question. Even when Sherlock asks himself, he cannot quite find an answer. And it shows: he looks so downhearted, John wraps an arm round his shoulders, letting Sherlock lean on him.

“I haven’t a clue. It just started, and it felt somewhat satisfying, so I didn’t stop.”

“Okay. I was going to ask you that next. How does it feel while you’re doing it.”

“It does hurt. But just enough to distract me from how much I regret doing something ridiculous. Or when I feel like a coward when I’ve refrained from something.”

“Well, that’s frustrating.”

Sherlock pulls up from John’s arms, frowning. John looks sombrely at him, still hanging on to his arms. “After all I’ve told you about putting yourself in unnecessary danger. I can’t stand it. I’ve had enough nightmares for this life because of things you’ve done - ”

“I _know_. That’s responsible for half the incidences I pull - ”

“ _Do_ you understand that now?” John gives him a little shake at each word.

“Of _course_ I do. I’ve told you I’m sorry.”

John sighs lightly. “You don’t need to tell me you’re sorry _any_ more. Promise.”

 

Sherlock scowls, reminding himself for the umpteenth time how undeserving of John he is. He doesn’t relax even when John’s pressed him against his heart again.

“It’s all very well saying sorry for all that, but it’s better if you can prove that you can do better.” It should sound dejecting – it certainly does when the poltergeist in Sherlock’s mind says it – but in that warm soothing tone of John’s voice, it really doesn’t.

“I remember telling you years ago, the brain is what matters, everything else is transport.” He says flatly against John’s shoulder.

“Yes, I know. But things have kind of… changed since then.”

“I had hoped they would.”

“They can, though, Sherlock. Really. I want to help you. I want it to get better.”

Sherlock starts to shift in his arms, but John holds onto him. “You do want to stop pulling your hair out?”

“ _Yes._ ”

John lets Sherlock settle into a more comfortable lean all over him, head resting on his shoulder, and all his excess limbs draped round them both. “Well, then. I’m glad you’ve told me. I want you to know you can trust me with it. And, God, Sherlock, I don’t want you to think you deserve to punish yourself.”

Sherlock sighs noisily.

“I mean it… you’re a dick, and I love you far too much for that.”

 

Sherlock starts writhing again, and John hugs him harder. “Nope, hug me back, properly, and then I’ll let you go.”

And Sherlock tries to do so, enfolding John in his arms, until he’s nuzzled right into Sherlock’s chest. John’s head is tucked right under Sherlock’s, so the top of his ashen blonde head warms up as Sherlock breathes out, and it’s still warm when Sherlock rests his cheek there. Their hearts are beating side by side… sharing their collective warmth, they fit together like a bulb in a lampshade… it feels, frankly, _amazing_ … they belong here, like this, in each others’ arms. Time seems to settle down. It feels _so_ good. Like nothing Sherlock has felt before, or thinks he ever will afterwards.

Of course they have given each other hugs before, but it feels different this time. Maybe because, with sharing something deep and closely guarded, and encouraging each other to understand it, their defenses are lowered even further. They’re edging closer to a time where they need never fear the crippling effect of emotions again.

It may be only a hug. Yet it’s fantastic, being crudely simple, and undemanding, and immensely satisfying. It takes Sherlock’s breath away, being so chaste yet so intimate all at once, and with a deep sigh, he finds himself loosen his grip. Like tension had been what was keeping him fixed and stable, and now, with that tension draining, he’s starting to melt inside.

 

His eyes squeeze closed, and, knowing full well what it’d mean to them both, Sherlock presses a hard kiss onto John’s temple, which is more pressing teeth and utter desperation than anything else. John nestles his head deeper into their embrace, letting Sherlock relax against him. His hands smooth over his shoulders and down his back, still holding him close without stifling him in warmth. “I’ve probably been a bigger prat than you, Sherl. You told me you loved me _last night_ , and I’ve had all day to tell you I love you as well. I don’t think you can get much worse than that. Even with your bloody insomnia.” John’s soft voice has gone warm and almost bittersweet, and Sherlock can’t help but laugh weakly, inbetween pressing more kisses over John’s face. Over his brow and his closed eyes and down his nose, easing off the pressure, and it draws out an airy sigh. John’s breath strokes over Sherlock’s face, still warm from being in his lungs, and for a moment they’re lost in each others’ eyes and the frailty of this moment.

By some miracle, Sherlock finds something of a voice. “Yes, well, if you… if we… I didn’t want - ”

John cups his face in his hands. “Sherlock, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Sherlock tries to clear his throat. “I didn’t want to make everything worse again. I seem to make a habit out of doing that… ” Sherlock struggles to get his voice out – it’s so husky it barely sounds like him – while John gently runs a thumb over his cheekbone. “Just as I’ve been doing with the Trichotillomania. I would think of all the possible means of how I could let it continue, and how I could put off telling you. Because I should’ve known I can’t hide it forever.” 

John tries to lean in, lips pursed. “John… putting it off was simply easier than coming clean. You don’t deserve this. Not in a million years. I sincerely doubt you deserve _me -_ ”

“Sherlock,”

“You don’t get nearly enough credit for how you put up with my absurdity… some nights you haven’t been able to, and when you weren’t here, I… I just - ”

“You’re not making any - ”

“I was absolutely certain _this_ would be the breaking point for you.”

John tries to kiss him properly, and misses and ends up pressing it on his nose.

“I’m serious. And trust me to spoil what we’d fought so hard for last night - ”

“ _Sherlock._ ” John says it with feeling now. Sherlock catches the insides of his cheeks with his teeth, and makes a prudish noise. John keeps caressing the planes of his cheeks, his dark eyes wide and honest.

“Have you finished now?”

 

“Erm,” Sherlock’s run out of words, lips parted and a delicate red flush starting to spread across his cheeks. John grabs the chance, and closes the gap between them, kissing him with all the insane longing they’d both carried for all this time. John does his best to keep it gentle, while Sherlock nearly gasps, not out of the surprise of the kiss but of the mad realisation that _this is happening. This is actually happening. How did we end up here… ?_

One hand at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, John steadies them, and his lips graze against Sherlock’s; light, tender, yet generous, savouring that sweet, sweet taste, still being exquisitely gentle so hopefully not to scare Sherlock off… though that’s probably not a worry; with an almost euphoric sigh, smooth and deep, a sound so much like a sob escapes Sherlock’s throat, his plush lips pink and glossy… his head filled with bubbles, he’s completely forgotten everything about breathing out, and is _so_ close to flopping into an embarrassed but deeply soothed puddle, the sofa barely wide enough to contain Sherlock’s long lanky body.

John lets Sherlock drop his head back on his shoulder, his hand hovering against the slightly ruffled curly tangle behind his ear, before resting at his neck – he can feel Sherlock’s pulse steadily picking up.

He’s hoping Sherlock is not verging on crying, but nonetheless he nuzzles against the side of his head, and whispers “I love you to pieces, y’know. You drive me up the wall, and if I can, I’ll help you take control of this.”

John’s hand is sliding back up Sherlock’s neck, and his fingers comb a stray lock back behind his ear.

“Can you show me?”

 

Sherlock slips, effortlessly, off the sofa, head tipped down, like a child reluctantly showing evidence of headlice. John carefully smoothes his palms over the swathe of lustrous coils, and, from where it parts and running down towards the back, he examines Sherlock’s scalp, starting at the obvious place: where there’s hair visibly missing at the back.

Bronzed black and white against each other, the windows of scalp through his hair are easy to find. They average about the size of a five-pence piece and most of them cluster here, before narrowing into a thin trail that slips into the rest of his hair and winds off to the right, ending just behind his ear. Like a long letter Y laid on its side, it can bury right into the thatch of curls, while, as John found out, one could see some of the damage if Sherlock would bow down and expose the back of his head.

Sherlock still feels rather liberated, after their first kiss, after their heart-to-heart moment, and now the feeling still lingers – John’s fingertips are on the places Sherlock knows off by heart, by relentlessly exploring them with his own fingers, inbetween pulling sessions and during sleepless nights of worrying about everything under the sun. He was expecting this to feel like John pressing his hands into his head and tug at something forbidden to reach the light of day – to his intense surprise, it doesn’t.

John’s supporting his head in the cradle of his hands as though he treasures it as passionately at Sherlock himself does, stroking his hair flat against his skull along the direction it grows, and it gives Sherlock butterflies.

A tremble runs from his scalp right down to the end of his spine, and it’s not tinged with the soured satisfaction of wrenching out a piece of his head when he’s dissatisfied with it. This is affectionate, giving, devoted in a different way beyond anything Sherlock’s scalp has felt for way, way too long, and it’s terrifying and intoxicating in perfectly equal measure.

 

“Hey, you can breathe, Sherlock… ” There’s an encouraging note in John’s voice, “it looks quite healthy. Doesn’t look inflamed at all. Which is good, your hair should grow back if you keep it looked after. Does it itch at all?”

Lost for something to say, Sherlock shakes his head.

“Okay. It’ll get better, and half the time, all it needs is to be left alone to heal by itself.”

Sherlock manages a conciliatory hum.

“You’re young enough, so it should grow back. Besides I think the more important thing to worry about is the anxiety.”

 _Excellent. Here is when he decides to send me off for therapy._ Sherlock starts to droop again.

“Listen, if you think you just want someone to give you support, whenever you need it, I can do that. You can talk to me, talk _at_ me, if something’s really wound you up.”

With a puzzled frown, as if he wants John to repeat what he’s just said, Sherlock’s head tilts up. He doesn’t breathe a word – and finds he doesn’t have to. John has that heart-melting grin on his face, and he plants a kiss at the bridge of his nose.

“You _can_ get through this, Sherlock. I know you can. You can do anything, if you set your mind to.”


	6. Tracing Head Lines

Sometimes the illusion of calm is just that, but now it’s not just an illusion. In this bubbly, high-strung state he’s in – he and John did just say _I love you_ for the first time a matter of days ago – Sherlock skirts round calmness, during lazy days when he’s digging through the mildly boring monotony between cases, as if calmness is a mirage, shimmering half a mile away in a road through a desert. He’s cautious around it, as if one hasty move could shatter the vision. And instead of worrying about the apathy that comes with waiting for John to come back from work, he’ll have a go at concentrating on something else.

 

It shouldn’t be flattering; John’s blog hardly ever is. Well, it used to be worse, how John used to blab about the wondrous ridiculousness of cases, and watching Sherlock from his so-called low vantage point, at first poking fun at how, quote unquote, spectacularly ignorant a man he could be – a neat juxtaposition beside his amazing specialized intelligence.

The early entries truly are embarrassing. These are written by a John Watson who could still count the impossible things he’d done for the sake of Sherlock; hadn’t found himself nearly butchered by assassins and feasted on by monstrous hounds; hadn’t watched Sherlock fall from St Bart’s roof and out of his life to leave it barren and empty. He didn’t know, all this time, Sherlock had been walking at his side with a mental parasite that had, and still has a penchant for getting him to tear a shred of his hair out at the drop of a hat.

Oh, yes, the godforsaken _hat_. The ear flaps hat. The deerstalker that the press photographers always insist he wears in public, and Mrs Hudson fawns over, saying Sherlock looks so handsome wearing it. The Yarders bought him one probably just for the publicity and the laugh. Sadly the poor hat is fated to be perpetually speared to the mantelpiece beside the handfuls of unpleasant fan mail. John made a passing noise the other day about how wearing the hat might help disguise the bald specks if they get too visible.

“Actually, you know what, bad idea. That’s probably a terrible idea.”

John hadn’t even seen the immensely disapproving reaction expression on Sherlock’s face before saying that. In fact John had the brass cheek to giggle at the apparently terrible idea.

“Why?”

What Sherlock really wanted was for John to _say_ why it was a bad idea. The stupid hat; it’s the punchline of all kinds of equally inane-for-a-different-reason jokes shared between NSY and Baker Street, as Sherlock’s reputation is nowhere near as invincible as everyone in the circle pretends it is.

“Because you hate the hat. Everyone knows you hate the hat. If you suddenly start wearing it off your own bat, without anyone to force you to put it on for public appearances, everyone’ll ask why, and if you’ve got a good explanation for them, I’d love to hear it.”

Sherlock had looked down his nose at the chirpy tone of John’s voice, sorely tempted to make a meal out of John needing to say all the obvious things all the time, even though he well knew he’d started the conversation. This was getting quite childish enough.

 

 

Inbetween reading, Sherlock frowns in his disapproval, and lets his hand nestle into his hair, sneaking here and there like a grass snake, directing precision wherever his hand decides to stop, and plucks out one hair, then another, then another, the prickling lighter, and slightly more intense, and lets them drop onto the surface of the table. There’s always an intrigue to watching them coil and uncoil, landing lightly on each other. They always wind in a different direction, with no way of predicting each time. There’s a huge archive of all the results in the Mind Palace.

He winces hard, eyes and teeth clenched as he pulls out one more, this time laying it down over the others, as they form a dainty cage atop the table like spun sugar. Then with a sigh, he carries out the obligation he and John agreed to, and finds the piece of paper folded up in a dressing gown pocket, opens it up to find the date, and adds another dash, to the end of the short row, counting each of these incidents, before slipping it back in, with quiet remorse as if it’s an unpaid debt, and returning to the screen.

This compendium of memories of John’s is infuriating and poignant all at once, and Sherlock can’t stop going over and over it. He can mull over them, over the regrets, over the frustrations, over the times when it got unbearable, and unbelievably, very funny. The insight into how John watched him from beside him over all this time, still winds Sherlock up – John’s giving all his followers the impression that he’s barely got enough to say for a blog – but it’s like this for a reason.

_This marks one chapter of our lives. Now is the time when we can commence a new one._

Sherlock nearly said that when John kissed him goodbye that morning before leaving for work; inside his head it sounded awfully romantic, which would likely mean that out loud it’d sound flat-out ridiculous. There’s no real reason why they should consider this a new start. They’d already begun that, when John moved back home…

The point is, they’d _always_ felt like this, and it really was just a matter of time before one of them would crack under the pressure and _say_ it. Sherlock had been struck by the thought that they’d found each other _now_ , rather than enduring another five years of sharing their lives as they’d always done, and only breathing a word about how they’d been in love for such a long time, and realising that it didn’t have to be this way. John had told him that, even though all he’d said out loud was that Sherlock was young enough for his scalp to completely heal, hardly knowing he’d said anything else.

 

 

It’s hugely flattering for John to think of how amazing and lovable Sherlock is, even now, when he knows about these stupid imperfections. Sentimental people are fond of explaining how true love is defined as loving someone in their entirety: loving their flaws equal to their good qualities. Sherlock can’t stand how ordinary John is, and yet he adores that fact like mad. It shouldn’t make sense, how these contradictory things seem to make sense for him. For them both. An _ordinary_ person would never be able to withstand Sherlock’s outrageousness, let alone the Trich _._ And John didn’t go to pieces over it. He’d done what he’d always done: taken it along with everything else. It shouldn’t be a surprise at all. John Watson, the documenter of these mad adventures, who was once a war hero, who didn’t even know Sherlock when he first proved what he could do.

That’s probably why it makes such perfect sense. John carries this fascinating duality: seemingly by instinct he knew to trust Sherlock, after dismissing the idea of trusting anyone else. John thrives on unpredictability, so he can carve out stability for himself, and he’s generous enough to offer this to Sherlock as well. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Suddenly Sherlock craves John. He wants to repeat what had happened that morning: John now makes a habit of kissing Sherlock good morning, before doing anything else, when he’s all bright eyes and softened edges and he smells of warm bedclothes and peaceful untroubled sleep. He longs to nuzzle against that ridiculous jumper, replenishing his memory of its scent and its fuzzy roughness. Sometimes, in moments that get darker and decadent, he dreams about pulling it over John’s head, and it being joined on the floor by the other things they were wearing, and indulging in unimpeded warmth of John’s flesh, pressing an ear over his fast-beating heart, dragging wet kisses down his throat and across his chest and trailing lower…

 

 

 

It happens again, at the Yard, about a week later, while Lestrade is in the interview room with a suspect, so therefore the rest of the division will start messing about. Sherlock and John are nestled beside each other, hunched over re-watching a piece of CCTV footage with no qualms about lack of respective personal space. Behind them, Sergeant Donovan has just opened her Secret Santa present, the first of everyone in the circle, and her first thought is to be thankful that Sherlock is thinking elsewhere, so he won’t be deducing who got what for each individual.

She spends the duration of everyone opening their gifts thinking about who will be her reluctant volunteer, and once she’s decides, she’s incredibly fast with her dispatch.

John notices first. Half a dozen giggling morons armed with red plastic hoops are positioned in various strategic places around their desk – one of them had wrapped round Sherlock’s head a pair of flamboyant felt-covered scarlet reindeer antlers, fastened round his head by a narrow belt with Velcro at the left side of his head. And a hoop sails through the air like a flying saucer, deftly landing right atop Sherlock’s head before sliding down the back. There’s one more hoop on the desk beside Sherlock, and two more on the antlers. Clearly some are much better aims than others.

They all freeze: Sherlock’s perked up like a meerkat, rising out of his seat and eyes scanning mercilessly round the room. He doesn’t look quite as cross as Donovan had anticipated. That being said, this was a collective joke by all of them.

“I’m afraid to say, I in fact _don’t_ feel quite so bad that I don’t share the festive spirit at the moment.” His voice tinged in steel, this single expression sweeping over them all, everyone having a unique reaction. Some cringe, one laughs nervously, two or three drop their hoops like embarrassed schoolchildren. But John cannot keep a straight face to save his life. That’s a sight he’ll take to his grave, Sherlock wearing red antlers with hoops on them, and an expression he’s much more used to seeing on the faces of cats wearing deely-boppers on YouTube. Deep disappointment for the sanity of the people who subjected him to this indecency. _This is going to be the best Christmas I’ve had in years._

 

 

“Sally, wasn’t it?” Sherlock mutters to him. John manages to get a “ _Yes_ ,” out before dissolving into giggles. Carbonated-drink giggles. Painfully-swallowed-down giggles.

Donovan looks like she’s got away with it, until Sherlock fixes eye contact with her. The friendly enmity they’ve shared all these years seems to be summed up in the capricious expressions they’re pulling at each other. “I know Christmas is a universal excuse to get everyone to be amiable with each other, but I doubt you or anyone in this room knows where to set the limit.”

 _Apart from me._ He’s likely sorely tempted to say that last bit out loud, and he would if he hadn’t had those garishly festive red antlers fastened round his head and been made into a literal sitting target for all these jokers.

She opens her mouth to say something, but the smugness on Sherlock’s face clouds rapidly – Lestrade has swung through the glass doors and found everyone misbehaving. Including, amazingly, the ones who actually want to be in the menagerie, not just the ones who are paid to.

 

“Sherlock, what are you wearing on your head?”

His tone of pissed-off is not dissimilar to that of the owner of an unruly dog. Sherlock blinks in customary meekness. “I believe I’m being accused of being a spoilsport.”

John nearly bursts into peals of noisy laughter. Lestrade huffs, requests the nearest joker to pass him their red hoop, and, taking a couple of steps forward, he throws it and it catches neatly onto one branch of an antler. Perfect aim from nearly five metres away. The collective mirth of the room deflates considerably.

“ ’Right? That should be enough for all of you to learn, no practical jokes, because I will win. Take those antlers off, Sherlock,”

Here he takes another step forward, so only Sherlock and John can hear. “And don’t stoop to their level.”

 

John is _this_ close to tears. Sherlock rolls his eyes, and peels off the Velcro and smoothes his hand over the imprint of the belt on his forehead, and over his hair to carefully rearrange it. “They’re positively puerile. That was not funny.”

With a snort of cheery derision, John replies, “Yes, but it was.”

 

 

 

Mrs Hudson is already getting into a ludicrously Christmassy mood as well. One mid-morning, after spending ages the day before devotedly turning 221A into a fairy-light festival, she drops in on Sherlock upstairs. For about an hour she coaxes him to light a few candles and hang up some red feathery jingling objects, before letting him slope back to the kitchen. Now’s her chance to grab John by the shirt collar.

“You do know about this, don’t you?”

She’s tactfully referring to the pulling tally, at this moment now pinned to the mantelpiece. She doesn’t want to worry excessively about Sherlock any more than anyone else does, and although she already has a good enough relationship with Sherlock, something’s telling her that it’s John who’s trusted with things she isn’t.

“It was his idea, and I told him I’m okay with it, as long as he doesn’t obsess over it. It’s like someone trying to lose weight carrying a set of scales with them everywhere all day. He’ll go mad if he spends too much time looking at what he’s done.”

Both their voices are lowered, but the place is definitely quiet enough for the kitchen to be in earshot. She pushes her hand into his, the pad of her thumb rubbing into his palm like a fortune teller.

“Alright, dear, but I do worry about him. I hope you’re looking after him.”

He smiles, trying to offer her some comfort. “Six pulling incidences over two weeks. And he’s told me he only pulls out a few strands at a time. I think he’s doing really well.”

From the kitchen, is Sherlock, carrying a plateful of lungs and with one eyebrow raised. John turns to his direction and grins broadly.

“Aren’t you, honey?”

Sherlock goes a startled pink, and struggles to control the clashing impulses to grin lopsidedly and drop the plate and turn around and hide somewhere.

Mrs Hudson’s eyes widen visibly, and she casually makes to get up and excuse herself, looking immensely pleased. “Well, I’ll give you two your space. I’m sure you don’t want me around if you’re, um… I’ll be off, then.”

“Have a good day,” Sherlock’s voice floats from the kitchen, sounding almost buoyant, which surprises him.

Once they hear the front door close, Sherlock bursts out, “Isn’t that nice? She was first in the very long list of people who assumed the two of us as a couple, and now she’s the first to have conclusive evidence of that. And she’s probably the most notorious when it comes to gossip on the street.”

John can think of plenty of things to say, but all he can manage to do is chuckle awkwardly, and as Sherlock demurely turns round to slide the lungs into the fridge, he can feel John drop a kiss at the crown of his head.

“Don’t worry about that… what are you doing with those?”

The lungs are not what Sherlock wants to think about any more. Even though the oncoming day won’t stop just because he wants it to.

“Got these from Bart’s… someone in Greenwich crashed their car into the river yesterday, who’d endured thirty years of heavy smoking beforehand. I have a few ideas I want to try.”

“Okay, but you’re going to have to wrap them up and leave them behind, I’m afraid. Greg’s going to be in court by eleven. Going to be a long day.” John nuzzles into Sherlock’s head for a moment, before lifting away. “Are you coming? Or am I going to have to hang those lungs above your bed, as a nice warning for you?”

Sherlock lets the fridge door tap closed with his trademark incorrigible attitude. “I haven’t had a cigarette for a considerable length of time.”

John returns to drape the Belstaff in Sherlock’s arms, and give him a big wet kiss at the same time. “Good,” he retorts.

That winning smile is something Sherlock could gaze at all day and _never_ get bored. The rest of the day is positively trivial by comparison; all through it Sherlock sneaks a look at John, hopeful that he might get to take a long lingering one without John noticing, whenever the opportunity arises.

 

 

It had all taken Sherlock quite by surprise, all the fragile forms love takes, and how they explode when he’s least expecting it. Thinking of when he cups his hands round Sherlock’s head and proves wrong the irrational idea – _he knows it’s not true, but that doesn’t seem to help!_ – proves that it’s possible to hold something valuable without breaking it, and with all the reverence it needs – and John thinks it deserves.

_He loves me!_

_I love him too. This is inconceivable, and I can’t think of anything better._

Sherlock wonders every so often what John might think each time he comes across the pulling tally. Some of these incidences he got to witness, some he didn’t. Sometimes John picks through the riot of stuff on a desk or table or work surface, actively looking for it, to put it somewhere where just the two of them will know to look for it, and also to make sure Sherlock doesn’t keep it to himself. Just in case he does something thoughtless, out of the guilt that the tally evokes.


End file.
